These Dreams
by DMartinez
Summary: Supernatural Roswell XO. RosS3 SpnS1 plus IMTOD. Disturbing visions cause two worlds to collide, causing battles to be fought head on against demons, spirits and aliens for all the hunters and pod squadders.
1. Prologue

Author: DMartinez  
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Metz, Katims, Kripke and the WB, UPN, CW. "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" belongs to BTO. No infringement intended.  
Rating: Mature (Sexual Situations, Vulgar Language, Violence)  
Category: Crossover. CC/UC Supernatural/Roswell  
Summary: After Roswell Series, After first season Supernatural + In My time of Dying. Pod Squad crosses paths with the Winchester men after Liz has some disturbing visions. Life has yet to settle for either set of travelers but making it work is hard enough when Liz's visions spell trouble for all when they begin to incorporate demons as well as aliens.

* * *

**These Dreams**

2003

_The moan. Grunts. Pants for air. Cries of passion. The sensations. Skin. Sweat._

Liz Evans sat bolt upright in her seat. Had she nodded off again? Was it just a dream? Or was it one of the visions that had become a part of everyday life as a human being saved by an Antarian King? She nearly leapt out of her skin when a warm hand touched her arm. "Liz?"

Max, it was just Max Evans. Her husband. "Fine."

"What?" He chuckled lightly, sitting up to speak softly to her.

"I'm fine." She repeated.

"I didn't ask the question yet." Max peered at her, his warm eyes so open and caring. His strong hands brushing her hair out of her face. His healing hands.

"Bad dream." She shook her head and tried to settle back into her seat, aware that all eyes were on them in the cramped van. Michael Guerin's eyes through the rearview. Isabel Ramirez's eyes around the front passenger seat. Kyle Valenti's from directly behind her. Maria DeLuca's from where she leaned against the window in the back.

"It didn't sound like a bad dream." Max whispered into her ear, a light chuckle in his voice.

"What did it sound like?" Liz asked softly, her eyes on the side window and its ever-changing landscape on the other side.

"Like you and I have some making up to do when we get a room to ourselves." His lips brushed the skin under her ear but Liz didn't feel it. She was back with the dream. Back with the eyes that were not warm amber and love. Eyes that burned with lust. Eyes that always seemed to be laughing. "Liz?"

"What?" Liz snapped her eyes off the window. Her husband's concerned eyes studied her face.

"Where did you go?"

"It's just a haunting dream." She tried to reassure him.

"Want to talk about it?"

"No." She shut her eyes but all she saw were laughing green eyes.

--

Dean Winchester walked in the door and set his jacket on the back of a chair and not draped across it. Dad was cool but Dad could be stern. Dad always had rules. Dad was and would always be a Marine. He raised his sons to be rough but civilized enough. Hands in his pockets, he cleared his throat before he spoke. "Sammy's doing okay. Looks like he got another scholarship. He'll be busy for at least another year. He could get another scholarship and be soaking up that frat air forever."

John Winchester nodded as he cleaned his gun and reloaded his stash of clips and packed rock salt cartridges, a new trick he and Dean had learned to fight spirits. He was proud of his estranged second son but Sammy never wanted to hear it from his old man. They were a lot alike in their ways. My way or the highway mentality. Still, John had Dean. Eager Dean. Skilled and obedient but belligerent Dean. John waited because Dean was still standing there. "No."

"What? I didn't say anything." The young man shrugged with his hands still jammed into his pockets. Eyes wide and slightly guilty.

"You're not hunting on your own. You can run errands. You can pick up supplies. You're not hunting anything down without me." John barely took his eyes off his tasks while he let into his oldest son.

"Dad. I'm twenty-three years old. It's not like I haven't done this all my life."

"And you're not hunting down anything by yourself until I say so." John packed his supplies in vests and bags to put in the car. They were a few hours out of Palo Alto. He had sent Dean off to check on Sam to give him something to do while he contacted his friends about the demon. "It's not that you're not good at it, Dean. You don't have the discipline to do it on your own."

"Right." Dean shook his head and fell onto his bed. "Yes, sir."

"I was your age when I met your mother." John rarely talked about his wife with his sons. They had pictures and some memories but that was it. It was selfish but John's pain kept him from speaking of her on most occasions. "I didn't have a clue what I was doing. Just discharged from the Marines, married my girl and before I knew it, I was in over my head. Bills, starting up the business and a baby on the way. It felt like it crept up on me even though I know it took years. You got your whole life to fight evil. Right now. You're doing it with me right there. Evil doesn't sleep. All shapes. Any place. All we have to do is stay alive long enough to figure out how to kill it." Dean nodded to the ceiling. "Dean."

"Yes, sir. Running errands and gathering information until you tell me that I'm ready."

John had to shake his head at the impatience of youth, which reminded him of something else that worried him about the child in front of him. Charm was genetic in Winchesters but Dean had gotten the lion's share. "You think too much with what you got in your pants, son. That's your whole problem."

"That's a little harsh, don't you think, Dad?" Dean sat up, half a laugh on his lips. He knew his dad was grinning before he laid eyes on him.

"Your affinity for the ladies nearly cost us a deadline." He reminded the young stud.

That grin. That smirking grin of Dean's. He knew exactly what his father was talking about. "I've overslept before."

"But not where I couldn't find you to kick your sorry ass out of bed." John set down his sawed off shotgun and shifted his attention to the window. He imagined having this talk was hard enough for a normal family and those ended shortly after they began but he'd spent his children's lives with them, in countless dirty hotels. Giving talks on the fly as they were needed, and repeated as warranted. The boys were used to them. At least Dean was. Sammy could never sit still to listen. "There's a time and a place, Dean. When we're on the trail, you gotta curb your libido. We have some down time, just don't go too far without telling me."

"I'm not five. I don't need you to hold my hand. Especially not when I'm with a lady." A chuckle in his voice. He knew it was important to stay focused but it was really hard to do when there were so many beautiful women in the country they lived in. And seriously, he was far too old to be getting sex talks.

"If you lose me, I've lost you. Sometimes you're too quick for your old man, Dean. I used to be able to trail you to your latest conquest. Lately, you're in and out of the bar before I even know you're gone. I need you to be careful. If something ever happens to me, I need you to be able to get to your brother in time." John met his son's eyes. "Do you understand me?"

"Yes, sir." Dean nodded. "I'll let you know." He paused and never wavered when he made his next promise. "I'll always get to him in time. No matter what."

* * *

TBC 


	2. Chapter 1

AN: I started mentally writing this the night that IMTOD aired. I began penning it before the second episode aired. So the universe branches off there and I may draw on season 2 for some plot points but so far haven't paralleled it too much as to be confusing. The Prologue and Parts 1 and 2 are pre-series. Parts 3 and beyond are after IMTOD.

* * *

Part 1 – 2003 – A few days later…

Liz waited on the counter of the bathroom while Isabel did her nightly routine. Face washing, tweezing, moisturizing. Maria was taking so long in the shower though. Isabel kept giving her strange looks… and probably because Liz kept shifting around nervously. "Liz… are you going to sit there acting like a drug addict or are you going to ask your question?"

"Um… I…" Liz blew out a breath. "My question isn't for you. I need Maria."

"It's not…" Isabel began packing up her things to head back to the van. "Are you pregnant?"

Liz almost laughed at the question. That might be a relief. "I don't know if you've noticed but Max and I don't really get a lot of alone time. Being pregnant is virtually impossible."

"She's going to be in there for an hour." Isabel pointed out and stood next to the sink, waiting.

"Maybe you can help." Liz focused her eyes on the floor as she contemplated her words. "You love Jesse, right? I mean… still after all this time?"

"Yes." The blonde's eyes watered. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't wish I was with him."

"Have you ever… dreamed of being with someone else?" Slowly, she lifted her eyes to her sister-in-law.

"Like… with?" She stressed the last word and widened her eyes.

"With." Liz nodded.

"So, you've been dreaming that you've been… with… some other man? Some man not my brother?" There was something in her sister-in-law's eyes that kept Isabel from jumping to conclusions the way she normally did where her brother was concerned.

"Intensely dreaming. I know I love Max and this completely weirds me out."

"Okay. It's just a dream, Liz." Isabel laid a hand on her shoulder. "It doesn't make you a bad person. Jesse sometimes dreams he's with other women. I saw it when I dreamwalked him one night. It drove me crazy so… once, I asked him about it. He said he talked about it to his therapist. It drove him nuts, too."

"What did the therapist say?"

"That Jesse misses his wife. He's not dating new women. He's not looking at other women but he misses me and so his brain is trying to… replace me because he was happy with me. His memories of me and the good times. It doesn't really work but maybe you're right. You and Max don't really get to spend a lot of… alone time together." Isabel wrapped an arm around her sister-in-law. "Maybe it's just your brain waking you up. Saying, 'hey, I need sex and if your husband isn't doing it… look at this guy' you know?"

"Maybe." Liz nodded.

"Okay… Was Isabel just profound about something?" Maria's voice wafted over the shower stall and over the rushing water.

"Maria… Shut up."

"Maybe if it was lots of different guys, I wouldn't worry so much but it's the same guy every time and I know I've never seen him in life." Liz tried to explain.

"What's he look like?" Maria called over. "Describe your dream hunk to the dream scry-er."

"Tall. Green eyes. Fair skin. Brownish blonde hair… muscular." Liz shut her eyes because it was humiliating to begin with and to know, without having to dredge up the dreams, precisely what this man looked like.

"Except for the tall and muscular… kind of the opposite of Max." Maria called out. "Like a mental reversal to shock your brain so you can go tell your man that you need some servicing."

"Your brain wiring has been alienized or whatever. Who knows how it's affected how your subconscious reaches out to your consciousness. Maybe your persistent dreaming of this guy is just like a polarization of your desires for Max." Isabel bit her lip. "Please don't make me have another conversation about my brother's sex life."

"Ladies! We think we found a town with a hotel for tomorrow night!" Kyle called in through a window. His eyes appearing over the ledge. "A speck called Racine."

"Kyle! I'm going to kick your ass!" Maria shouted.

"How come you guys have stall doors?" Kyle frowned, his chin propped up on the short ledge.

"Because three women in a shower does not really end in an orgy." Isabel sent a small blast at Kyle, knocking him off whatever he was standing on.

Maria finally emerged from her stall in fresh clothes. "So, hear that, Liz? You and the hubby can get it on and hopefully be rid of your dream guy."

"Do you have to be so crass?" Liz scoffed and grabbed her bag to join them on the trek to where the van was parked for the night.

--

Dean glanced around the town. It didn't look like anything out of the ordinary but Dad had sent him to do recon while he studied the thing. Plucking a badge from his glove compartment, he strode out onto the scene and started asking questions. "I'm Nicholas Seine with the border patrol. I need to know what went on out here."

"It was huge." The old man leapt at the chance to talk to someone new. "Eight feet tall. Fangs. A werewolf. It was a full moon last night."

"I see." Dean nodded and looked to the local policeman standing nearby, a portly man trying to contain his laughter. "What did this… werewolf do?"

"Picked up my truck and threw it over the fence." The old man pointed.

"A werewolf picked up your truck and threw it… over the fence." Dean repeated, eyes following to show that there was indeed an overturned truck next to a mangled fence. "Did anyone else see it?"

"Ask the boogeyman. Apparently he was standing on the other side of the fence." The deputy snickered.

"Not no bogeyman. It was a regular man. Had a remote control in his hands." The old man went on.

Dean's cell phone rang while he was just getting to the interesting answers from the yokel. Holding up his hand he walked away and he flipped open the phone. "Yeah."

"Is that how you answer a phone?"

"No, sir. What did you find, sir?"

"It's moved on. Meet me in Clarence. It's two towns over. You get a room; say you're waiting for your partner. Then you get on over to the Wayne's. There's only one. You talk to them. Find out everything you can. Wait for me there."

"Yes sir."

"Did they say anything interesting?"

"Just something about a werewolf and a guy with a remote control. Apparently the werewolf threw a car at the guy with the remote control." Dean rolled his eyes.

"Sounds like someone tried to rope the wind. The guy with the remote control is dead?"

"If there's a body, no one's found it. Pissed off werewolf running around?"

"That's my guess so far. If there is a remote. Find it. It could be useful to bring the bitch down."

"Dad?"

"It's only hitting men in Clarence. Men who cheat on their wives. My guess is that it's a woman during the day and that it's a woman who's controlling it or trying to anyway. Be careful, Dean."

"Yes, sir."

The next night…

Max stroked the skin on Liz's back where she sighed happily on her side of the narrow bed. Max had been ready to trade the narrow bed for two so that more people could have a bed but Isabel and Maria had taken over room negotiations and forced the single room with its narrow bed on the married couple. Trying to get comfortable on it had led to the upside of the small bed. "Are we okay?"

"Hmm?" Liz carefully turned to see her husband's face, his hand around her to catch her if she should fall off the bed.

"I know we don't get to spend too much time together you know… without everyone else breathing down our necks. It's not that I don't want to." He sighed heavily as his eyes roamed over her naked body. "What was I talking about?"

"I'm not sure." Liz shook her head at her easily distracted husband. "Something about if we're okay."

"Right." He snapped his eyes to her face. "Are we suffering for the close quarters?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure." Liz brushed his lips softly with hers. "But we need to be alone sometimes."

"I know. I just… Isabel doesn't have Jesse and I'm afraid if we… I don't want her to make a mistake because she's jealous or something. You know she gets a little spiteful when she's upset."

"She is jealous, Max. She doesn't like that she is. She doesn't want to wish bad things for us just because she doesn't have him. She still talks to him in his dreams. They miss each other and neither one knows what to do." Liz tried to get comfortable again but the bed was really too small. "We're okay though. I know I love you. The quarters are cramped and we don't hog single rooms. The others are appreciative."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Then why was there a huge to-do about the arrangements?"

"It's stupid." Liz warned him but took a deep breath. "I've been having these dreams…"

"Oh… the dreams." Max leaned in closer.

"What?"

"You've been having them for awhile. I've been able to keep the guys from commenting but you get… loud during the dreams." He caressed her face. "Almost as loud as when you…" He swallowed thickly, recalling the moment in the immediate past when she had made that sound in his arms as she fell apart. "When we…"

"I'm mortified." Liz closed her eyes as her face flushed.

"No one has said anything because I asked them not to."

"I talked to the girls about it yesterday. They said the dreams were just a way of waking me up to my… needs."

"So they bother you?"

"Yes."

"Dreaming about me bothers you?" Max sat up.

"No." Liz sat up as best as she could. "The dreams aren't about you… and that bothers me."

"Who are they about? What does he want?"

"I don't know. Never seen him before in my life." She took his hands in hers. "Maria said because it's… not you that it reminds me that I need you. So… they talked the guys into the double room. Maybe we should take advantage of the single room… to you know… ward off more dreams." She tugged him towards her. "I like it when you make me moan."

"Yeah, I like that too." He covered her body with his, staring down into her beautiful face. "You know that I love you and I'll say it everyday until the day I die but I need you to be honest with me if you aren't happy with the way things are."

"It's hard, Max. Living this way but I wouldn't have come with you if I didn't think it would be worth it in the end."

"You're sure?"

"I know it's risky, Max but maybe we really should consider slowing down for a bit. I hate to be selfish just to play house but I need a week, or a month or two months where the landscape isn't going to change every time I open my eyes."

"I know." He nodded solemnly. "Everyone else might appreciate the reprieve. I just… don't want us too exposed… with Kyle changing right now and everything."

"Yeah, I know."

"Good thing I gave up that crown thing. If it's their idea… It might go over better." He smiled crookedly down at her.

"Michael's your obstacle."

"Ah… my work is cut out for me." Max laughed and kissed his wife's shoulder, then her neck and then her ear. "As I recall… just a minute ago you were saying something about taking advantage of the private room."

--

Tossing his phone against the bed, Dean swore. Clarence was a bust and Dad had never shown up. Said to meet him in the next town. The thing was moving fast. Dean was young and slightly inexperienced but he wasn't stupid. He knew when someone was giving him the run around. It bit at his pride to be so insulted by someone he loved more than anything on this earth. To be given busy work until the real men could make the kill. To be 22 and not be seen as man enough.

When the phone rang, Dean considered not answering it. He had just gotten off the phone with Dad. He didn't want to talk to him again so soon no matter what his attitude had been when they were talking. Cursing, he scooped it up and braced himself before answering. "Yes, sir."

"Dean?"

"Sammy?" To hear his little brother's voice after such a crap day was like music to his ears… but there was always a downside in talking to Sam.

"Dude, I told you to stop calling me that." The voice chuckled on the line. "Dad around?"

"No." Dean bit out but cooled his temper before clearing his throat to address his baby brother. It didn't matter that he was grateful for the call but if Sammy went off on Dad again, Dean was going to let him have it. "So, college working out for you?"

"Dean, don't start." He breathed harshly on the line for a moment. "When is he going to accept that I can do this?"

"That's not it, Sammy." Dean sighed. He wasn't up to the conversation. Not with the friction with Dad. Not with this thing on the loose. He lost the internal battle with his nerves so shot and frustrated with the trail on the bitch from hell. "We could use you, right now."

"No. I'm not going back to that. I have things in order for the first time ever, Dean. A job, school, friends. I'm tired all the time but it's normal."

"Wouldn't kill you to check in a little more often so we don't have to wonder if you're still alive." Dean set his jaw. "Nothing like going behind Dad's back to get what you want."

"Right. Taking a couple of tests is a betrayal."

"You could have said something before Dad got the call from the board of education that you got your GED or the letter at Greensborough saying you got a 1300 or something on the SAT. That fucking letter from Stanford was just icing on the cake. You could've said something. Just some notice that you were going to leave before you took off and abandoned your family."

Silence stretched out for a long time. "I had to leave. That way of life is not a life. I want more for my life. Aren't you sick of looking into the shadows and wondering if it's just a shadow or if there's something in it?"

"Four out of five times, there is something in there, Sammy. You know. You lived it. Going to college doesn't make it go away."

"Well neither did hunting down the creatures of the night. You kill one, five, or twenty and there are a hundred to take their places. It never ends."

"Hit the books, Sammy. I have to get on the road. I have work to do." Dean hung up the phone and stared at his bag. That bag was home. Not a place. Barely a car. That bag held all he needed.

* * *

TBC 


	3. Chapter 2

Part 2 – A month later…

Dean tossed his badge back in his glove box with the other fakes. He was tempted to take a shotgun from the trunk and put a real cartridge in it. No one was talking. He was chasing his tail. Dad had sent him on another wild goose chase and he had yet to show up. Gunning the gas for a moment, he thought about stopping for a drink but he didn't need Dad giving him lectures about drinking on the job or scoring while on the trail. There'd be time enough to get plastered after they caught the damned bitch.

If Sammy was around, he'd be getting yelled at enough for the both of them. Hell, he missed that kid but Sam would just slow them down. Whining and back talking when lives were on the line. Still, Dean had wanted to stop in longer to talk to the kid but Dad had a timetable. Not that Sam would have welcomed either with open arms. Dad had rules. Dad was going to be pissed if Dean didn't go get a room before the motel filled up.

--

Liz dragged her feet up the stairs to the room she'd shared with Max the past few weeks and stumbled to the door with her key in hand. All she wanted was to get out of her uniform and into bed with her husband. The lights were off, so she slipped in as quietly as possible. She slipped out of her uniform, socks and shoes and into bed, her eyes closed before she felt his arm around her waist.

It was five or twenty minutes when the door opened with a bang. "When I said to let me know where you were going, I did not mean to bring them into our room."

Liz fell out of bed she was so startled. Kneeling, she peered over the bed and realized the warm body she'd been snuggling against was not that of her beloved husband.

"What are you talking about? It's the middle of the night." The young man growled, running his hand through his already disheveled hair.

"I know." The older man pointed to the cowering figure on the floor. "Want to explain why you brought her in here when I told you I was meeting you?"

"I think there was some kind of misunderstanding." Liz's voice wavered just a bit. "If you could just hand me my uniform…"

"When I asked if they did turn down service, I didn't think I'd get an answer." The young man assessed the young woman who had apparently been occupying the other half of the narrow bed.

"Be a gentleman, and look away, son." He picked up the uniform and tossed it at the young woman. "Wrong room?"

"I guess so." Liz scrambled into the polyester dress.

"Don't look at me like that. I got the keys from the front desk. She said the room was empty." The young man sat up. "I didn't invite anyone up."

Liz froze as she was edging to the door. She'd been in the room for a month. Where was Max? Glancing at her bedmate, she was met with a pair of green eyes. Laughing green eyes. Leaping toward the door, she made excuses. "They must have moved us. I'm so sorry."

"Don't look at me like that. I didn't do anything. I followed your instructions to the letter. It's not my fault the hotel doesn't count their keys, Dad."

"My son is rude. He was raised in a barn. I hope your mess gets straightened out." The older man held the door open for her.

Liz pulled the key out of her pocket. "I guess I don't need this. I am so sorry."

"Wait a minute." The young man called out. "Didn't you realize your mistake when there was already someone in the bed?"

"My husband was supposed to be sleeping." She backed out of the room and calmly walked down to the stairwell. Where were they? What had happened?

"There she is. Liz." The hiss came from around the building. "Liz! Come on. We have to go."

The gang was all in the van already. They had been waiting for her, as not to call attention when they got the hell out of town. Max tucked her into his arms as he explained. "I was trimming the trees at the Johnson place when a guy pulled up. I heard him tell Mr. Johnson that he was FBI. We should leave."

--

"What?" Dean looked at his father. "That was funny." His father continued to frown. "I can't help it if the ladies are seeking me out and crawling into bed with me."

"She was embarrassed." John shook his head at his son. "You sleep like the dead, Dean. She walked in and climbed into bed with you and you slept the whole time."

"I was exhausted. You've had me running all over the state on little sleep." Dean complained. His sleep was ruined.

"Son, the Marines don't get eight hours of sleep a night. They function just fine."

"I'm not a Marine, sir." Dean bit out. "Neither are you, if I recall. Honorably discharged before I was born. That's nearly a quarter century."

"Look at me, Dean." John knew what he looked like. What he had turned into since his Mary had died. He looked older than his years. He looked grizzled on the best of days. "I could not have survived this long without the discipline I learned in the Corps. You and Sammy were always trying to buck me and my rules but the rules save our lives."

"Yes, sir." He said the words but he didn't have to like it.

"Believe or not, I vaguely remember what it was like to be young and on the prowl. Three rules."

"Yes, sir."

"Leave me a clue. Don't bring her to your room if you know I'm coming. Use a condom."

"Yes, sir." Dean nodded stiffly. His sleep was thoroughly interrupted and he'd gotten a sex chat. The second in a month. He needed to think of something else before trying to get back to sleep. "Sammy checked in a while back. He's doing okay."

"Night, Dean. Sleep in tomorrow. I'll need you fresh tomorrow night. We're going to kill this thing."

--

Max eyed Liz where she stared out of the passenger side window. She had been quiet since they had left Racine. Everyone else seemed to be sleeping but even though Liz had worked a double, she was still awake. "Is something wrong?"

"No." She shook her head but didn't look at him.

"I'm sorry we had to leave but I couldn't risk it with FBI so close."

"Did you even find out what they were investigating?" She was asking the questions but Max could see that they were just coming out. She wasn't with him. She was somewhere else.

"I really am sorry that we had to go. I know you liked it there."

"It's okay, Max. Really." Liz turned to lean against the door, her eyes on the ceiling of the nearly busted van.

"Talk to me." Max rubbed her shin, barely taking his eyes off the road.

"You left me, Max." She bit her lip to stop the tears. Those green eyes, mocking her. "No sign. Nothing. I went to the room and got into bed with a total stranger because you forgot to get to me sooner."

"What?" Max sat up straighter. "When?"

"Tonight. I got off work a little early. I walked back to our room and climbed into bed. I thought you were asleep. It was someone else. If his father hadn't walked in, I might still be in there." Liz scrubbed at her face with her hands. "We need a better system, Max. The FBI might find it suspicious that six young people abandoned their jobs overnight, no notice and vanished from town the minute they hit. People might remember our faces."

"Liz."

She sat up and took his hand in hers. "Just let me know. This has always been a problem with you and me. The waiting to tell the other person how we really feel and what we really know. You said we couldn't really play house but that's what we were doing. Playing at house. We need to really, really do it, Max. I don't care about fancy houses and prestigious jobs. We need to settle somewhere. Where nothing happens, where we don't stick out like sore thumbs. Where we can stop playing."

"Liz, what's wrong?" He cupped her face. "What are you trying to tell me?"

Liz opened her mouth to tell him the truth but when she caught the concern in his eyes, she couldn't do it. She couldn't tell him that the dream man had a real life counterpart. She couldn't tell him how those dreams made her feel. How ashamed she was that they existed. How confused she was to have met the man in person. When Max looked at her with so much love, she couldn't hurt him that way. She couldn't control it. She couldn't stop it. The quality of the dreams hit her as never before. Her powers were creeping along. She didn't want them if they were going to show her things that couldn't be. And they couldn't be. Absolutely not. Not ever. There was no way it would happen because she loved Max too much.

"Liz?"

"It's nothing, Max." Liz shut her eyes and kissed his hand between hers. "I love you."

He smiled at her. "I love you, too. Tell me what's wrong. I can't know what I'm doing wrong if you don't tell me."

"You're not doing anything wrong. I promise."

"Then what was that look in your eyes? That scared look?"

"I was asleep long enough to dream. Waking up next to someone who wasn't you… scary."

A shadow passed over his eyes. "I understand and I'm sorry we couldn't get word to you sooner. That should have never happened."

"Promise me that you'll always be the one I wake up next to."

"I plan to always be the one you wake up next to."

* * *

TBC 


	4. Chapter 3

Part 3 – 2006 – One Week after "In My Time of Dying"

(November 10, 2006)

"How are you doing?" Sam asked as he helped rebuild the car at Bobby's Garage. It was mostly another car with some sentimental things saved from the old car but whatever made Dean feel better… not that anything seemed to appease Dean these days; especially not his little brother's proficiency with tools, which were coming along slower than molasses in winter.

"What? Did you grow ovaries while I was dying? I said 'I'm fine.' So, I'm fine." Dean griped as he locked the pin in to hold the door in place. Struggling with the weight on his own, he continued to lash out at his baby brother. "If you ask me again if I'm fine or if I'm doing okay, I'll kick your ass back into that hospital."

"You haven't been yourself. You've been unusually focused on the car, man." He was only trying to help. Trying to make Dean see that it was okay to talk about it but his brother was not having it. Everyone was worried about Dean. Marty and Bobby because they knew Dad and they remembered the way Dean used to be… and this Dean wasn't him. Grieving Dean was a pain in the ass even more so than good ol' Dean of days past.

"And you've been unusually focused on me. How about we stop yapping and finish the fucking car, Sam? I just want to get on the road again and kill some demons, okay?" Dean tossed the tools aside and yanked his wallet out of his pocket. It seemed like an afterthought but Sam just watched as his brother made a show of rifling through it. "I'm going to the bar. My wallet's light."

"I'll just hunt up some leads then…" Sam shrugged and ducked back under the hood of the car. There wasn't much to do with it until the parts came in but he was tired of being the focus of Dean's anger. He just hoped Dean hadn't noticed he was messing with his precious engine.

"Yeah, you do that."

"Do me a favor, though?" Sam called out, aware that ears were listening but it wasn't like it was a great secret. It seemed like half the town had been there to witness the original event. Dean only tilted his head and waited for the request. "Don't hit on Lillian. Just leave her alone. For once."

"Dude, whatever." Dean stormed out of the garage and across the road to the bar. He'd been there every night since he'd gotten out of the hospital. Every night since they had given Dad a proper funeral by way of a salted pyre. He was very nearly the only daily regular. Locals came in on payday. Hunters didn't keep schedules but they all stopped at Marty's when they drove through. He shoved open the door and examined the contents of the bar as he made his way over for a drink. A couple of laughing waitresses on one end waiting for drinks to deliver to tables of drunken truckers and local color. No hunters this week to express how good a hunter Dad was or how they hadn't been on speaking terms with Dad for a long while. Dad had that effect on other hunters. "Marie!"

"It's Mary… but I'll let it slide on account of you being so cute." The blonde turned to look him over with a smile. "You look like road kill. I'll bring your usual. You going to hustle the pool table again?"

"Any fresh blood?" He shoved his hands into his pockets, brows furrowed deeply though he was trying to relax. Bantering with the waitresses took his mind off things but only for a few moments.

"Some. Be careful." She brushed passed him with a tray of drinks for the other side of the bar.

"I love you." The dark haired bartender leaned over the bar to kiss the dark haired waitress.

"I love you, more." She drew him back for a second kiss.

"I'd love some wings, Lilly." Dean gagged at the display but hid the expression when they broke apart. She pinned him with the same glare she'd first greeted him with a week earlier when he'd walked in, leered at her and then promptly propositioned her. She hadn't even let him get out another slick come on before she told him to forget about it.

"Lillian. Not Lilly." She rolled her eyes but hopped off the stool she knelt on to go tack the order up on the turnstile.

Dean stood there for a minute watching her and realized that he shouldn't have been when the bartender crossed his arms and started boring holes into Dean's skull with his eyes. "So, Nathan… how long you been seeing Lillian?"

"A long time." Came the nod and grin. The guy was so far gone, it didn't take much to wipe that frown off his face.

"Has she always been this big a bitch?" Dean hadn't even had a drink yet and he was already pissing Nathan off. He'd have to watch that.

Nathan stiffened, the grin gone. "Lillian's a good judge of character. If she doesn't like you, then neither do I."

"Seriously." Dean backed away at the look in Nathan's eyes. Still, he just couldn't stop talking. "She has a bug up her ass and she's going to ruin my game again."

"Maybe hustling isn't for you. Marty lets you do what you want for whatever reason but you drag my wife into this and things could get ugly."

"Your wife?"

"Yeah, my wife. Lillian." Nathan clarified before picking up a rag to clean some glasses. Mary set the bottle of beer in front of Dean without a word and Dean made his way out to his spot near the pool table. A couple of guys were playing for fun but they motioned to each other when Dean took his seat. It would be easy money.

--

Sam walked into the bar and found his brother in the same spot he'd found him the night before, leaning on the pool table with his third beer of the evening. He set the laptop down next to Dean's empty basket of wings and watched his brother stare at the waitresses dancing while it was slow. "Every night, you come in here to hustle, then you stick around to stare at a woman I'm pretty sure is claimed by the bartender."

Dean's eyes followed the luscious ass as she swayed with Mary on the far side of the bar. "An ass like that has no business being married." He nodded to his brother's disbelieving face at the revelation. "It's against the law of man. She's what… 20?" He took a long pull on his beer to finish it and waved it at the first of the two girls to glance over, Lillian, who did not seem pleased to be called upon.

"Man…" Sam sighed and glanced at Marty exchanging words with the bar staff. "Marty lets you hustle his customers out of love for Dad. Don't start trouble. Hit on Mary or Amanda… please hit on Amanda if you have to hit on someone."

"Amanda." Dean glanced at his brother and tapped his wrist at Lillian who was taking forever to bring him his beer. "So you do have a pulse. Amanda is hot but she leaves me cold."

He shook his head and glanced around for the statuesque beauty. She must have had the night off. "She just looks sad."

"Yeah. Sad means clingy. Mary's a talker… and the guy who isn't her boyfriend, scares me more than a demon." He gestured to the back of the bar, where Gary was returning to the grill. "Seriously, I want to look him up in Dad's journal. He just might be in there… Hair Demon. What do you think?"

"Nathan scares me." Sam muttered, more worried about Dean's taste in women getting them both in trouble while they were stranded.

"Nathan's a puppy dog." Dean scoffed and motioned to the man who was leaning over the bar whispering to his wife. "She has him wrapped around her little finger. He is undeserving of a hot little thing like Lillian."

"He'll kill you. I don't know how many more miracles you're going to get." The second it was out of his mouth, Sam wished he hadn't used that word.

"Miracles?!" Dean roared at his baby brother. He slammed his empty beer bottle on the table with the other empties, attracting more attention than either needed. "Cause Dad dying and me living was a miracle? Because that guy getting murdered by a Reaper was a miracle? Why am I even on this planet when everyone seems to think I'd be better off dead, Sam?! I'm living on borrowed time. You don't know what that's like."

Sam watched his brother storm out of the bar, ripping the beer out of Lillian's hand on the way and nearly bowling her over in the process. Tears filled his eyes but he didn't let them fall. He glanced at Marty behind the bar, who nodded to him that he'd keep an eye out. Lillian gripped the table for balance. "I'm sorry for Dean. He's…"

"No… Um… he looked upset." Lillian shook her head as if trying to clear it.

"I want you to know that whatever trouble he gives you, he's not normally like this." Sam explained as he tucked his laptop into his bag to leave. "We were in a horrible… accident last week. Our dad died and Dean lived, he was dad's favorite. He's taking it really hard." He managed a tight smile at Lillian's sympathetic face. "What's Dean's tab?"

"Oh um… Marty said he'll take care of it." She pointed to the man who was leaning on the bar, watching Dean kick around the parking lot.

"Okay. I'll pay Marty later. Seriously. I know he's annoying but don't let him get to you and… tell Nathan I'm controlling him."

"Nathan isn't worried by Dean." Lillian gave Sam a brilliant smile. "And when he does get worried, I set things right."

"That's good to hear." Sam laughed at the mischievous way Lillian grinned. "I'd like to keep my brother a while."

"Anyway. I'm nicer to you than I am your brother… Nathan takes issue with you." Lillian smiled broadly and bounded off to flirt with her husband over the bar. Sam just shook his head and laughed.

The next night…

(November 11, 2006)

Maria glanced over at Liz, who was studying a newspaper article on some scientific breakthrough on something or other. It was dead as per the usual and, thusly, she was bored. "Lillian… why are you so hard on the hotties?"

"Huh?" Liz murmured, her focus still on the stem cell media circus.

"You don't think he's hot?" At her friend's blank face, Maria sighed. "Tall guy, dreamy green eyes, likes to proposition you over his dinner? Hot brother with gorgeous hair and serious brown eyes?"

"Oh… yeah. Dean and Sam. I guess they're good looking. Mary, I'm married. I'm not looking at the scenery." Liz tried to get back to her paper.

"That Dean guy takes a shine to you and you know he'd tip better if you were nicer." She took a moment to consider her words. "Or you know… at all."

"I don't want to be nicer to him. He doesn't even pay his own tab. Tipping would be like… ironic for him or something." Liz waved her off. "He really rubs me the wrong way. I like to limit my contact."

"I get that he's interested but it's harmless." Maria glanced back at where Max and Michael were cutting up in the kitchen since the night was so slow. Michael couldn't give a flip about her these days. Not that she had been encouraging when he had. "He knows you're with… Nathan."

"Could you stop pausing before you say our names, if someone were from a certain place, they would catch on right away that your name isn't really Mary, which by the way, is a lousy cover." The brown orbs caught her friend's green eyes. "What?"

"You've been really grumpy for the past week for someone, who, I know, is getting seriously laid every night." She playfully nudged her friend. "The walls… like rice paper."

Liz bit her lip as she recalled just that morning when she had pounced on Max after breakfast. They'd had to start playing a game of muffling each other's noises to prevent a slip of their real names.

Maria leaned on the bar, propping a foot up on a stool in a rather unladylike manner. "If Gary wasn't always breathing down my neck, I might chat up one or both of those boys."

"They're grieving right now, Mary. It wouldn't last." Liz warned, the tingling in the back of her brain acting up again.

"Did you… feel something?" Maria stressed the last word, tossing in a small hand gesture.

It took Liz a long moment to put the pieces of Maria's unspoken riddle together. "No. Last night, Sam told me his dad died last week. They both took it pretty hard."

"Marty says their dad was this hot-shot bounty hunter or something." Maria gave a tight smile. "I uh… asked."

"Really?" Liz turned to look at the brothers who were arguing outside the bar, once again. "Maybe we shouldn't get too close to them. Bounty hunters take all sorts of jobs. They work on pay, not on subject."

"Meaning?"

"I wouldn't put it past our friends in the black suits to put out a subtle bulletin just to get rid of one or more of us. Bounty hunters are beyond scruples." Liz whispered almost to herself. "For the right amount of money, those hotties would put a bullet in us to collect."

--

Sam held out his hands. He'd had enough of going round and round the same old subjects with no progress. "Okay. Drink yourself into a stupor. What good are you going to do if we have to run on the fly? You'll crash us into the nearest telephone pole and nothing is going to matter much after that. Not me, not you, not the demon and not anyone the demon will kill after us."

That sobered Dean up a bit as he caught a whiff of some local's cologne. That smell mixed with sweat brought up the memories he kept with him to survive. The smell of smoke, burning hair, baby powder, ashes, Stetson, sweat, wet wool as if he were back in that day. The smell brought the memory of other smells, of sounds… The baby crying, Dad muttering curses, shouts, rushing water. Warmth from the arms around him, from Sammy in his arms… heat from the fire. Dean stilled and looked up into his baby brother's eyes. "Just be glad you can't remember that night, Sammy. I know that you lived it again with Jess but that night in Lawrence changed us all. It changed everything."

Sam just nodded for a moment. There was nothing he could say to that. He didn't remember that night in Lawrence. He was six months old when their mother had died. That night in Palo Alto was still with him. He was older though. Dean had been young when it had happened. Three or four years old. "Okay. But I hate having to drag you out of there every night. Marty puts up with it but it's going to get tired and when we go hunting… we can't make mistakes."

"We're not hunting right now, Sam. We're rebuilding a car. You want to be normal? A day of rebuilding a car ends with a beer or six. Okay?" Dean turned around and gripped the handle on the door. "I'm gonna grab some dinner. I'll be back later."

* * *

TBC 


	5. Chapter 4

Part 4 – A week later…

(November 18, 2006)

Michael slid the newspaper in front of Max. "What do you see?"

"Dead guy." Max tried to fish the last pepper out of his take out box. He glanced at his friend, not knowing if he wanted to know where he was going to take this sudden interest in the newspaper. "What do you see?"

"It looks like a smudge on his chest." Michael popped the toothpick out of his mouth and traced a slightly less gray area of the black and white photo's chest.

"A handprint?" Max set the box down and glanced up at his ladies working on the other side of the bar.

"I hopped on over last night because I didn't want to make a big deal if I was just…" Michael wiped his hands on a rag. "It's not there now but the coroner's report has it on there, color pictures. This guy wasn't important as far as I can tell but they found his body half buried fifty miles out. If it was this fresh, then someone wanted him found and wanted him found with the handprint."

"So, a shapeshifter killed this man." All sorts of thoughts ran through Max's head but there was only one shapeshifter that he knew of. "Kal?"

"What if there's another one? We don't know who's been coming and going. They haven't ID'd the guy yet but unless he comes up as an aspiring actor, FBI, military or informant… I wouldn't point the finger at Kal."

"Don't tell the girls." Max downed his cherry coke. "We'll check it out. We'll tell Kyle to keep an eye out."

"What's Kyle gonna do? Throw pebbles at invaders with his mind? Anyway, you think no one's going to miss us skipping out for a few days?" Michael gestured to his ever-irritable non-girlfriend who was flirting with the clientele yet again.

"When's the last time you got laid?" He tapped the table. "You and Mary…"

"It's been a while." The taller man nodded. "I've got an itch."

"You're rusty. You could use a wingman."

"I need all the help I can get." Michael agreed and escaped back into the kitchen before Marty could yell for him to stop slacking off. Max studied the picture for a moment more before scanning the article for pertinent details. He had a few more hours to come up with the excuses.

--

Dean scrapped his knuckles on a particularly angry piece of machinery and let loose a string of curses. Sam let out a laugh, wiping at his tears of joy with a greasy hand. Dean shuffled off to the office to find something to slow the bleeding. He had found a wad of napkins just as the door opened to admit the reason he'd cut himself in the first place: Lillian bringing Stan his lunch. Stan plopped down on the couch to enjoy and Lillian promptly put her back to Dean to sit on the edge of the desk. He listened to them chat for a bit before he gave up. "Stan, know where the first aid kit is?"

"Bobby doesn't keep one. Says if we bleed to death, it's our own damn fault." Stan mumbled around a mouthful of burger with a slow shake of his head. When his eyes fell on the bloody mess, he wished he hadn't looked up.

Lillian fidgeted for a moment before she finally turned to look at him. Her eyes fell on the dripping, bleeding mess. "What did you do?"

"Putting my engine together, my hand slipped on the wrench." Dean mustered up all the courage to admit how but not why he'd cut himself. All he'd done was glance up at the footsteps. His view had been unobstructed as Lillian bent to tell Stan she'd brought his lunch. Then he'd cut himself so deep, he was very glad he hadn't cut anything important.

Lillian glanced around and found a degreasing agent. Taking his hand in hers, she cleaned what she could while applying pressure to the point above his hand to slow the bleeding. Fashioning a bandage out of Stan's last clean handkerchief, Lillian bound up his hand. "Given that you've already lost plenty of blood, I would suggest more food than booze tonight."

"If you hate me so much, why do you care?" Dean whispered.

"I don't hate you. I don't like you." She told him and resumed her seat across from Stan. "If I hated you, you wouldn't be around me for a minute longer than I wanted."

"She's right. I wasn't there but I heard she threw Nathan's ex against a wall… twice." 'Stan' tossed in, unabashedly admitting he'd been listening. The banter between 'Lillian' and Dean was way more entertaining than any fight between 'Mary' and 'Gary.'

"Stan… eat your lunch." Lillian made a face at him.

"Dean…" Sam called into the office, a laugh in his voice. "You okay?"

"Fine."

"Keep your eyes on your tools and off waitress ass and maybe you wouldn't have this problem." Sam's voice floated in.

Dean's face colored as he found his voice. "Excuse me. I'm about to become an only child."

Dean was out the door in a second and then the sounds of a scuffle reached their ears. Stan glanced at Lillian and burst out laughing. "What?"

"You." Stan shook his head. "You love torturing that guy. You 'don't hate him' but you 'don't like him'." He snorted. "What really bugs you about that guy?"

"Reminds me of someone." She shook her head. "I don't know. He just bugs me."

"A kinder person wouldn't strut around the shop in those jeans. You're liable to kill everyone in here, me included. Your husband might appreciate it, too."

"Shut up."

"I'm saying the jeans are a little tight. Okay?" He snickered. "Like… you know… paint."

Sam wandered into the office a few seconds later. "Hate to interrupt but did you find bandages in here?"

"Are you okay?" Lillian hopped off the desk to have a look at Sam's arm. "It's not that bad."

"I didn't know you were in here. I wouldn't have teased him like that." Sam admitted, towering over her so much, she had him sit on the desk while she found something to catch the blood.

"I was just suggesting she not torture him with something he can't have." Stan mumbled around a mouthful.

"It's really weird the way he took to you." Sam shrugged slightly. "You're not his type. I think it's just a game for him."

"Yeah, I think so, too." She nodded slightly. "He knows I'm a married woman."

"Yeah, sometimes… never mind. You're not that kind of girl."

--

Isabel flipped bottles and poured drinks with flair. Her tips were always huge. When she was on shift, the drinkers came out of the woodwork to watch. Max kissed her cheek on his way off duty. He sat at a table in his wife's section to wait for his dinner. She set it down in front of him with a cherry coke. "You're too good to me."

"I like serving you." She placed a kiss on his lips. "Maybe I'll get off early and you can return the favor?"

He cupped her face in his hands. "You've been insatiable for weeks…" The last time they had spent so much of their alone time in bed, there were outside influences in the form of sexy dreams that hadn't included him. "Are you having dreams again?"

"No dreams." She shook her head slowly but the words had come out too rushed. "I just… love loving you."

"I'm not complaining." He reassured her.

"Enjoy it while you can. I'm taking a break soon so I can be whiny and unbearable." She joked. She was rarely either.

"Speaking of the next week or so." Max pulled her onto his lap. "Gary needs some guy time. I hate to leave you but…"

"Oh… like burping and scratching or…"

"Picking up girls a town or two away." He shrugged apologetically. "I'm just a wing man. I'll tattoo my ring on and wear a nametag." He promised with a kiss. "He just needs to… let off some steam without Mary around. You know he adores her but…"

"I know." Liz nodded. The Michael and Maria yo-yo could be really good or really bad and it was currently really, really, horrifically bad. "Grab some supplies and meet me at home. We'll have some days to make up for."

"You're on."

--

"Pass." Dean tossed a dart at the board and missed the bulls' eye by a hair. It hit the wire rim and clattered to the floor. "What else you got?"

"Teen goes missing. Cops say she ran away. Her friends say she wouldn't do that." Sam knew that one wasn't going to catch Dean's attention but some lead was better than no lead.

"Pass."

"Four teens die. Parents blame the witch board." It sounded hokier when said aloud than when he'd come across the story in the paper.

"Pass. Suicide pact."

"Crop circles in North Dakota. Amish country." He was crossing it out even as Dean was giving his response.

"Pass. It's a prank."

"Woman claims she's having Elvis's baby."

"The dude's been dead forever and he's still getting tail." Dean shrugged and fished his burger out from under the fries. "So, you got nothing?"

"Unless you want to do the research." Sam shook his head.

"Pass."

"Do me a favor? If you're going to drink yourself into a stupor, pay for it and take it to the room. I don't want another scene. Nathan and Marty are getting tetchy."

"Whatever." Dean mumbled around his burger. It was probably a good idea. He'd seen Lillian before but he didn't know where. Maybe sometime before she'd gotten married. He couldn't get it out of his head. Finishing his dinner, he drained his beer and headed for the door. Sam barely even noticed where he was fishing for a trail on the Internet. The night was cool but he needed something to tell him that he was still alive and the night wind could certainly do that.

Ducking into the convenience store, he examined his wallet and decided he had enough cash to get his buzz for the evening if Sam was going to make such a big stink about the bar. Looking up, he cursed. That was the last person Dean needed to see. They were roughly the same height but it was a toss up on who was more built. Nathan won in the bicep division. Still, Dean would bet that Nathan had never been in a fight in his life. Feeling a bit deflated after the scene at the shop, he needed a boost before bed. Dean watched Nathan grab a strip of condoms and rifle through his wallet for cash. "Married guy uses condoms?"

Nathan glanced up, startled but grinned as his face flooded with blood. "We don't trust birth control or rhythm."

"And babies not on the agenda? I hear you."

"We're not ready." He shrugged, pocketing the contraception and his change. "She's my everything. Not ready to share her, yet."

"Lucky dog." Dean pulled a case of beer from the cooler. "You want? Watching a game with the brother tonight."

"I don't drink."

"Does your wife? It might explain a few things."

Nathan nodded his head to himself for a moment and inclined his head briefly to the other man. "You're a funny guy, Dean. Don't lose your sense of humor."

"What's that?"

"Stan told me your car is close to done. I assume you'll be leaving soon." Nathan leaned on the door for a moment. "I'm not blind but as far as I see it, you're harmless. It bothers me a bit but watching her shoot you down is a confidence builder."

* * *

TBC


	6. Chapter 5

Part 5 – The following night…

(November 19, 2006)

Dean watched Amanda flip the bottles around her wrists and catch them in midair. The bar was dead but practice made perfect. "Want to take a break?"

"Pardon me?" She made a face before pouring a row of shots.

"You and me…. A break in the alley."

"I feel so sorry for you." Amanda leaned on the bar with a grin, her shirt gaping just enough to keep guys parked at the bar and ordering drinks all night during her shift. "Lillian is off the market and we've all seen you drooling in her wake. You're just a sad puppy dog. I hate to tell you this but…" She tapped her ring finger against the bar. "I am also unavailable."

"Where's your husband?"

"Working." She bit out and grabbed a rag to clean up her mess behind the bar.

He hadn't missed the tension the question had brought on. "Why in the world did you get married?"

"I love him. It's been almost five years. Four of them… he's been working."

"But you love him. Great. I'm not gonna hit on Marie."

"I wouldn't if I were you either. Gary and Mary are broken up but he'll still break your neck for looking at her."

"That's what I thought." Dean took a deep swallow of his beer.

"Don't you work?" Amanda fished for details, subtly as was her way.

"Normally, yes. The back order on a part is keeping me in town. Trust me. I don't want to be here."

"What do you do?"

"Traveling bible salesman." His green eyes flicked up to hers. "You?"

"You're a funny guy, Dean."

"Is that an insult or something?"

"What?" She stared down at his face. "What?"

"Nathan said the same thing to me last night."

"Ah, my brother." Amanda shrugged. "From him, insult. From me. Consider it a observation of character."

"Good or bad?"

"Girls like a guy who can make them laugh." She offered with a shrug

--

Kyle shook his head; they always had to do this. He didn't even really know why they were still doing it except that sometimes there were away trips with just a few members of the group and keeping the rooms was expensive on half the salary. "No. Tips are private stash money. Check and salary is group money but tips are personal." He counted out Isabel's wages and handed her back the large fold of bills. "Save it. Maybe you have enough to buy a ticket to Boston, someday."

"I couldn't leave you guys." Isabel clenched the money. She had enough in her hands to get her halfway to Boston. She could easily make up the difference with just a few more weeks of bottle twirling and flashing just enough cleavage to keep the guys interested. She didn't know if she could actually leave her brother to find her husband but Max had always told her it was an option. He wasn't keeping her away but there was danger. There would probably always be danger and reasons to keep her from being happy.

"Okay." Liz nodded from where she tallied up the group incomes in her notebook. "Maybe you tuck it away… in case of an emergency."

"A get-out-of-town fund." Kyle added as he watched Liz take her tips and fold them into her purse. "What's that?"

"Condom fund." Liz said simply and slipped her purse over the back of her chair.

"Seriously. The two of you need to move your room." Isabel complained. "Maria and I are excited that you and Max are… enjoying your marriage but please. We don't need to hear the soundtrack of your love every night."

"Get earmuffs." Liz answered and rose to put their books up in her backpack next to the door. "When did they say they were coming back?"

Kyle shrugged. "Michael told me a week. He's not counting on meeting someone right away. He wanted a few days leeway. Max said he'd do his best to make sure Michael got laid right off the bat so they could come back sooner."

"Oh, so we're not telling Maria why they left." Isabel made a face. "I sort of told her."

"Isabel." Liz sighed and sagged into her seat. "When she gets off her shift, she going to want to talk and complain and…" She sat up. "I have to work. Good luck with that."

"Should we really be encouraging Michael to sow his seed?" Isabel sipped her soda. "I mean, really. What if he accidentally mates or something?"

"Oats. Oats. He's sowing oats. Not seeds." Kyle corrected. "Oats do not grow."

"Max will remind Michael to be careful." Liz rubbed her temples.

"I talked to Max before he left. I told him that if he even looks at a woman, I'd poke his eyes out." Isabel smiled brightly.

"He wouldn't."

"Still." Clearing her throat, she addressed Liz only. "And tell your boyfriend to stop staring at my breasts."

"Pardon me?" Liz blinked rapidly at her sister-in-law.

"That Dean guy can't have you so he moved on to me. It creeps me out. Tell him to stop."

The next night…

(November 20, 2006)

"Where's your husband?" Dean leaned on the pool cue. He leered, drunkenly and unapologetically, as she bent to pick up beer bottles from under the pool table where his victims had left them. "He hasn't been around the last couple of days."

"Out." Liz groaned as she lifted the bucket onto the table.

"You just let him go out without you? For days at a time?"

"I trust him." She sighed heavily and took away Dean's empty bottles, setting down a fresh one when he was done with his current. Totaling four so early this night.

"Why'd you marry him?" Green eyes glittering mischievously."I love him." She shrugged off the question. She was tired. She was worried. She really didn't need 20 questions from the current bar drunk.

"Come on. Pregnancy scare? Getting out of the house? Why? Really." He stopped her as she was taking his plate away.

"I love him." Liz repeated, irritated but talking about Max meant thinking about him and thinking about him calmed her down.

"Come on. Really, how long have you been married?"

"Four years last July." She couldn't deny the smile creeping across her face.

"How old are you?" He stared at her incredulously.

"Almost 23." She took her hand back. "My parents weren't overly overbearing and I was a virgin until my wedding night."

"Now that is a damn shame." Dean watched her go. "A shame, I tell you."

Sam plopped down. "A body turned up. Internal organs were ash. No clue what can do something like that."

"Ash?" Dean tore his eyes off Lillian's ass and looked to his brother. "Now you're talking. Let's go hunting."

"Shouldn't we do some research first? It's not that far and I'd personally like a guarantee that I'm not going to end up the next person who got cremated while eating dinner."

Dean narrowed his eyes at his brother. There was something the kid wasn't saying. "One day, Sam. I want to be out of here by tomorrow night."

Sam took a breath and admitted what he hadn't wanted to when he sat down. "We're also going to have to borrow a car. The part didn't come in, again, today."

"Fuck." Dean growled to himself. "I'll talk to Bobby about a loaner."

The next night…

(November 21, 2006)

Liz wiped down the bar. Isabel worked on her nails. Tuesday nights were slow and finding things to do was a hard task. Only drunks and Dean stopped in on Tuesdays. Dean moped on Tuesdays, drinking up a large tab until Sam had to be called to help him to his room. Isabel finished her nails and practiced flipping bottles. Dean nursed his beer and fiddled with a charm around his neck.

Liz felt sorry for him after finding out why he moped so much and delivered a plate of wings. "Eat something. Sam doesn't enjoy dragging you home."

"Home. This is not home." He bit out but looked to the wings like they were welcome. His eyebrows set in a deep V as he tore into a greasy wing with his fingers.

"Then where is home?" The question was out before she could stop herself.

"Not to disparage your happy memories of this rat-trap town but home is Lawrence, Kansas. Back roads, picket fences, small town values." He picked at a particularly greasy wing, tearing the flesh from the bone deliberately in thin strings. He probably couldn't eat more than one before the beer and the grease decided that they didn't mix well in his stomach.

"This isn't home for us either." Liz nodded to herself and took a seat across from him. "We're not from around here."

"So, why are you still here?" Rushing to backtrack, he held up his hand to prevent a scathing retort. "I realize Valor Springs has its charm but it's not that charming. I mean, Marty talks like you've been here forever, but I don't know how long that is."

"It's been a year or two, I guess." She shrugged and suppressed a smile as he tried to eat the stringy mess he'd made. "We used to move around a lot. I really liked the last town we spent time in but Valor Springs is just as good. Better. We've stayed longer."

"And you're still living in a hotel? Take it from someone who has lived out of hotels all his life, you don't want to get stuck doing that." Remembering all the filthy, small and cheap rooms Dad had dragged them through, left a bad taste in his mouth. Sammy was right. It was no way to raise children. They weren't children anymore. They were hunters. That was how hunters lived. "Even the suites in a town like this aren't really a place to settle."

She nodded, dropping her eyes to the table as the words spilled out. She didn't have to tell him a damn thing but the words just came out. "Nathan and I have been squirreling away some money. We're thinking of renting a house. It's a step up. If we're going to pay the money, I don't want it to be an apartment."

"A plan." Dean nodded to his plate as he cleaned his hands with a fresh napkin. "Correct me if I'm wrong. My brother never hesitates to do it. I've been watching you these past weeks and… there's something off about you."

"Off?" Liz fought the uneasiness creeping up her spine.

"Most of your little crew belongs here. You and Amanda, really don't. Trust me, I've been through enough of these small town bars." He waved her to be quiet a moment. "Amanda is easy. She's hiding. From her husband, from his family. Something. She's a big beauty hiding in a small town and that never lasts. You… read science journals on your break. You quoted something to Sammy the other day that made him laugh and about six locals scratch their heads."

"Is that supposed to mean something?"

"Sam and I grew up together. Brothers and all. We get each other. We have some of the same interests but he went to college. He's really smart. I'm proud of the little fuck nut." Eyes flicked to her face. "Pardon my language, but you talk the way he does. You learned all kinds of words and you use them like I use all the bad words. Like breathing air." He looked into her face, her mask. "What are you running from?"

"I'm not running. Staying put, here."

"No. You don't fit in. The clothes are probably influenced by Marie but you aren't a bar type. You don't drink. Your husband doesn't drink but you serve drinks to those who can't help themselves. I think it's interesting."

"Her name is Mary and why don't you ever say her name correctly?" Liz got to her feet and started collecting his empty bottles, anything to avoid wherever Dean was going with this.

Conceding to the subject change, Dean took a moment before he explained. "Mary was my mother's name."

"Was?" She stilled.

"She was… killed when I was a kid. I barely remember her."

"So… both your… I'm so sorry, Dean." The way she apologized, Dean knew she really meant it. She was an honest person.

"You didn't kill either one. Don't sweat it." He gestured to the other chair again. "It's slow. Keep me company. Tell me about where you're from."

"Nowhere special." Liz shook her head but took a seat again. She knew where she had to lie and where she could be honest. "Just one of those one-horse towns in the middle of nowhere. My parents own a restaurant. I worked there from the day I turned 13 until graduation day. Nathan and I went to high school together. They didn't always approve of us but they came around before I graduated high school."

"Why didn't you go to college? It's not the money. Sam scraped together the dough and we don't have a dime." He thought to all those credit cards he had in his pockets, all in different names.

"I had wanted to go to college but… sometimes there are more important things than having that life." She bit her lip. It sounded lame but it was what she told herself every day.

"I've always found it overrated myself… but I've never been a genius or anything. That's all Sammy."

"Does he know that you still call him Sammy? You switch to Sam when he comes in here." She gave him a look. "I get the suspicion that it's not really something I should start doing myself."

"He hates it. He'll always be Sammy to me though. I helped save his life when… well, when." Dean nodded to the table. "They say when you save someone's life, you become responsible for it."

"Is that how you feel? Responsible for his life?"

"Yeah, I guess. When we were younger, I didn't feel that way. He was just a brat and I had to take care of him when Dad was away. When I got older, I just started to… feel like it was more than just a duty to keep him safe. Probably why I didn't fight harder when he left us to go to school. I wanted him to stay but I wanted him safe, too. Not that anyone is safe where they are."

"I've never thought of it that way. Nathan saved my life a time or two. I guess I've done the same for him. It just… felt like the right thing to do. Maybe we are responsible for each other."

"Where did he really go? He's been gone a few days." Dean pressed.

"Gary." Liz managed a smile. Maria still hadn't let that go. She hadn't been 'offering her services' but she had wanted them considered before he took off across the state to get laid. "He and Mary are on the outs. Have been for a long while. The way I heard it was he had an itch and he needed a wingman. He couldn't take Stan because Stan is competition. So Nathan is helping Gary score."

"It sounds so wrong."

"But, that's what they said." Liz grabbed the bucket to take to the kitchen. "I have to get back to work."

"Why do you hate me?"

"I don't hate you." She sighed heavily and turned to face him. "You just… remind me of someone. I don't really know. I can't really remember and I'm probably wrong to fault you for whoever has me irritated at them." Then she realized he was staring at her. "What?"

Something about the way her hair framed her face brought up that tickle of recognition again but he just couldn't place her. He had no context for the memories and it was driving him nuts. "Have we met before?"

"I really doubt it."

"Ever since I laid eyes on you, I kind of felt like I've seen you before. I didn't hit on you in here before?" She didn't answer, so he scoured her face for something he could recall. "You sure you didn't grow up here? We used to run through here quite a bit when I was much more of a ladies man."

"No, I think I would have remembered." She turned to go and then suddenly his hand was on her arm. "Seriously, I—"

Dean had to catch her as suddenly she sank to the floor, the bucket of glasses and bottles crashing to the floor. "Somebody!"

The entire bar went still as Dean set 'Lillian' on the floor. 'Amanda' was there in a second, trying to help revive the fallen waitress. "What happened?"

"We were just talking. She started to walk away and then she just… fainted." Dean shed his jacket to pillow her head. Amanda went about checking her pulse and for breathing. Dean helped where he could.

"Li- Lillian." Isabel patted her cheeks. "Wake up." Her sister-in-law's eyes fluttered slightly and then she opened them, staring at nothing. Isabel didn't dare breathe a breath of relief just yet. Coughing, she gagged and reached for the bucket. "Oh my god. Are you okay?"

"It's um… a side effect, I guess." She breathed out as soon as she caught her breath.

"What? Like morning sickness?" Dean blurted out.

"I think I need to go lay down." Liz whispered to Isabel.

"Okay. Okay." Isabel pulled Liz off the floor and glanced around. It was a slow night. If she left, there would be no one to watch the bar until Marty got back.

"I'll take her." Dean offered, immediately sober.

"I…" Isabel reluctantly let Dean pick up Liz, whose eyes had closed again. She covered the fallen woman with Dean's jacket.

"I guess Nathan doesn't know yet." Dean shrugged and turned for the door.

"Amanda…" Liz whispered, her eyes open once more but just a crack. "Tell Stan that Pete might want to go home early today."

She fainted dead away in Dean's arms. He secured her against his chest and made his way across the street to the hotel where he knew that Lillian and Nathan had a room. Nathan wasn't back yet but the maid let them in. He waited fifteen minutes for her to come around fully. Then he'd held her hair back as she'd gotten sick again. A million times he asked himself why he was doing it when he could easily find her friends to take over for him.

"I'm okay." She finally said and forced herself to her feet to rinse out her mouth. She stared into the mirror for a long minute, hoping and waiting for him to leave. "Go help them."

"Help who?"

"Stan and Pete and Bobby. Go help them." Liz gasped out, sinking to her knees and grasping her head. "I'll be fine. Go."

"L… Lillian." 'Mary' gasped from the doorway. "What happened?"

"She passed out for a second at the bar. She's been getting sick ever since." Dean shoved his hands into his pockets and headed for the door. "Do you got this?"

"Yeah." Maria nodded. "Lillian?"

"I'm fine but Dean really needs to go help Stan and Pete."

"Yeah. Stan went to Pete's already. Just like Amanda said." Maria nodded, rushing over to help Liz get up off the floor. "Bobby's there, he's standing home base. Yvette is missing. They need all the people they can get to help find her. The men are looking for clues and the women are mostly pacing around."

"Who?" Dean shook his head at them.

"Marty's goddaughter, Yvette." Liz whispered. When Dean had finally left them alone, she collapsed into Maria. "It was so strong. It knocked me off my feet."

"A vision?"

"Yeah. It was a big mess. I don't know what has her. I couldn't see it but Dean has to be there to stop it."

"Why?"

"I don't know why!" Liz screamed, holding her head again. "I just know that if he doesn't get there, that little girl is not going to last the night. She's in a dark place. Maybe a shed. Um… there's a crescent on the door… so maybe an old outhouse."

"Liz? Are you going to be okay if I go help?" Maria asked, her voice thick with worry. She glanced at the door. She didn't know if she could handle what was going on out there.

"I'll be fine but that little girl is so scared and whoever has her is not messing around."

"Okay. I'll go help." Maria nodded and helped Liz onto a bed.

"You'll see Sam on the walkway. Tell him that Dean asked for the gun but not the buckshot." Liz curled around her pillow as the pain ebbed away.

"Okay. Shotgun, no buckshot."

"And Maria?" Liz called before the door opened.

"What?"

"Michael didn't go whoring."

"He didn't?" She nodded and disappeared into the night.

Liz curled around her pain and waited for it to pass. She had never had a vision rock her to her soul before. The pain it had brought was so much more intense than even the green fluttering had been in high school. If that little girl wasn't saved by sunrise, something horrible was going to happen to her.

* * *

TBC 


	7. Chapter 6

Part 6 – After sunrise…

(November 22, 2006)

Max set his bag next to the door and crept into bed with his wife. "Hi." She didn't answer him though her eyes were open. "Liz?"

"Don't lie to me again. I don't care why. Don't lie to me again." She whispered at last.

"Lie about what?"

"Michael needs some time with a lady?" Liz sat up and was pleased to find the nausea had passed but her ire had grown. "I had visions last night and you were out hunting down a shapeshifter."

"Visions?" Max knelt in front of her.

"They were so strong, Max." She started to cry and the tears fell so easily. She had seen so much in that little time she had blacked out. "I was working and it slammed into me like a semi. Something took Marty's goddaughter and it was going to kill her. I saw what would happen but I couldn't tell anyone around me."

"Is she okay?"

"I don't know. No one's come back yet. I sent everyone out to look for her." She gripped his arms and contemplated her next words. "We might have to leave. I had to… arrange some circumstances and people might be suspicious."

"Okay. You rest and I'll be back. Okay? I'll find out what happened." Max tried to calm her down but she was so freaked out that he wasn't sure she was even listening to him.

She turned hard brown eyes on him. "Did you kill it?"

"Didn't find it. It was long gone." Max took one last look at her. "I'm sorry I lied."

"It's not the lie. You didn't trust me to stay put." Her eyes softened and he could see the pain in them.

"No, I didn't." He admitted.

"You're going to have to start lying better then."

"Can't lie to someone who has visions of the truth."

--

Dean watched Marty, Pete and Hannah coo over little Yvette, who had just stopped crying. Dean's heart was still racing. No authorities involved, just honest teamwork among hunters and friends. There was hardly time for research but Sam had done it with Bobby's help and some of Marty's books. "How did you know to show up with rock salt shells if you didn't know there would be spirits involved until two hours ago? You have a vision or something?"

"Me?" Sam looked to his shaken brother. "You asked me to bring the shot gun."

"No, I didn't." His mind ran over the hours of the night. Stomping through the woods with his trusty sawed off shotgun with a pocket full of rock salt shells, blasting his way to the outhouse where the little girl was being held until the seventh hour, where she would have been a tasty treat for some monster living under the shithouse if Dean hadn't shot off the spirit guards and pulled her out before sunrise. It was lucky. Damn lucky. "I didn't know shit until you handed me the gun."

"Mary said you asked for the gun."

"Why would I send Marie?"

"That's what I asked her. She said you helped Lillian home after she fainted." Sam stared off in the distance where the remains of the outhouse stood amongst a blazing fire. "Said you were heading out with the search party and you wanted the gun and the rock salt."

"She said I wanted the rock salt?"

"She said you wanted the gun but not the buckshot. I put it together. You didn't tell her?"

"I haven't seen Marie since… I left Lillian's room. I never even told her anything about you. She was supposed to stay and take care of Lillian."

"What's going on?" Sam shook his head. "I guess it doesn't matter. The girl is safe."

"I don't like being played like a pawn. How did she know to send me out there? How did Marie know I'd need the gun?"

"What are you thinking, Dean?" Sam followed his brother's eyes to the hotel where Nathan, Gary, Stan, Mary and Amanda were gathered in heavy discussion.

"Something's going on with those guys. Lillian collapses, tells Amanda to tell Stan to stick with Pete. Tells me that Stan and Pete could use my help. Then Marie tells you to bring me my gun… before you and Bobby figure out what that thing is…"

"Lillian told you to come help?"

"She tells me Pete needs my help and then Marie tells us about Yvette. When I got there, Pete pulls me aside to tell me he's scared shitless because Yvette's been talking to someone who wasn't there and all of a sudden she's gone. Bobby says he's on it. Then you show up with my gun. What kind of sense does that make?"

"Say it, Dean. There's something you want to say."

"She knew. She was scared. She kept puking. When you told me what this ritual was gonna mean for the girl… I nearly lost it. I think she saw something when she collapsed. I think her head is as fucked as yours is. She played us all."

"To save a life, Dean." Sam had put it together as well but he had to keep Dean from rushing to conclusions.

"Why is it a big secret?"

"Like we tell everyone we know that occasionally I have migraine-inducing visions. We don't even tell Dad's friends about that stuff. Missouri had to drag it out of me and I didn't hardly tell her anything."

"This town is like demon hunter central." Dean mused aloud.

"What if it's like the demon? The yellow-eyed demon." Sam offered. "If the wrong people got to me, I could be working for the wrong side. Changing events for the wrong side. Saving the wrong people. Not saving the good people."

Dean's eyes softened. He and Sammy kept each other off the wrong track. With Dad gone, they were all the other had. No other demon hunter would be able to turn them if they slipped up. Lillian's friends rallied around her. How many of them had given up their homes? How many had followed her out to keep her safe? If only Dean could figure out where he'd seen her before. "Let's go get on that trail, Sam. I need to get out of here for a bit."

Later that day…

"Trail's dead." Sam shook his head. His eyes ran over the coroner's report but something wasn't right. "This looks sanitized."

"Cover up?"

"Little things aren't matching up with what I dug up earlier. I don't know." He tossed the file onto the dashboard. "Want to turn around?"

"Only if you drive." Dean got out of the borrowed car to stretch his legs. This whole deal had gone sideways. They had waited too long because of Marty's goddaughter. No one was talking because there had already been someone to go through asking questions. They had to hightail it out of town or else the law was going to run them out for digging into something that someone didn't want them seeing. Not that there was much left to see. They had missed the excitement. If he and Sam didn't keep driving through, they might get picked up. Settling into the passenger's seat, Dean picked up Sam's laptop. "Is there a signal?"

"Just barely."

"Could I look someone up?"

"You're better off waiting until we get back to hook it up to a landline." Sam shrugged as he settled himself into the driver's seat. "Who are you looking up?"

"What?" Dean's head popped up. "Just trying to figure out if that thing is really dead."

"But you said some one, not some thing."

"Whatever dude, it was just a question."

--

Maria snickered as she set the bag of groceries over. "These are from Marty."

"What?" Max peered into the bag and began unloading soups and crackers.

"He said his best waitress needed the best in her present condition and that the two of you should take the day to celebrate." She giggled again.

"Present condition." Max repeated and looked to his wife, panic in his eyes.

"It's just because I passed out then started puking." Liz explained from where she laid under the covers of their bed. "Dean said something. I'm sure people overheard. It's just a rumor. It will blow over."

"There's not… like a… possibility, right?" He brushed her hair out of her face.

"No. We've been careful." She stilled his hands. "It wouldn't be a horrible thing, though, right?"

"That's my cue to vamoose." Maria backed towards the door. "Feel better, petunia."

Liz waited until she heard Maria's footsteps fade away. "Max?"

"As much as I would enjoy someday hearing that news…" He took a deep breath and ran his eyes over his ailing wife. "I would like it to be when we're not living out of hotel rooms, or running from the law or hiding from evil aliens."

"Max, that day might never come. I don't want to spend my life waiting for the 'day when'." She bit her lip against tears. "I want to meet our children. I feel it in my bones that we are meant to have children. So what if we have to have them on the go. It will be hard but worth it. I've been saving our money. We could rent that house on Mulberry if the others chip in for rent. It's three bedrooms."

"Which would be fine for the six of us. The girls bunking together, the guys sharing a room but that child will need space after a while and we'd have to kick two people out of the house." Max cupped her face. "I won't rule out the event of a child in our life but… I can't plan on one. We don't have room to plan a child with all that is going on."

"We've been here for two years, Max. We're still living out of the hotel. We should be at least renting an apartment."

"This isn't home."

Exasperated, Liz pleaded with him to understand how important it was to her that they be able to live their lives even if they had to compromise on the circumstances. "Then where is? Roswell is ancient history. We can't go back but we can't be afraid to move forward."

"I know."

"Max…" She pleaded.

"I love you, Liz. I love you so much. It will happen someday. I know. Not right now but someday we'll have that. You'll have kids and a house and we might have to live under assumed names but I plan for you to be safe." He kissed her lips lightly. "I need you to know that your safety comes first for me. Always. That's why I lied. That's why I left with Michael."

"Even if it means you put yourself in danger?" He nodded against her forehead. She swallowed down a lump. "What if you need me to save your life and I'm not there?"

"Why would you say something like that?"

"I get so scared when you lie to me, Max. I need you to tell me the truth."

"And do you?" He sat up slightly. "Tell me the truth?"

A rapid knock interrupted them. Dean and Sam stood on the other side of the door when Max answered it. "We just came by to see how Lillian was doing. She missed all the excitement."

"She's doing better." Max nodded to them, wiping at his eyes. Hoping they hadn't seen the tears on his face.

"Congratulations… by the way." Dean offered his hand.

"Thanks but…" Max took it firmly and let go as he glanced back at his wife. "It was just a false alarm. Stomach flu. I need to tell Marty, so he doesn't send more groceries over."

"Hey, Lillian." Sam nodded.

"Hi, Sam. So, you guys were heroes or something." Liz smiled as brightly as she could, her head still resting on the pillow, not caring if anyone saw the tear tracks. "Mary gave me the good news earlier."

"Yeah…" Dean almost asked more but Sam set his foot on Dean's toes. "Lucky thing."

"Good." Liz nodded to herself. "Your jacket is on the table. Nathan, could you?"

Max nodded and retrieved the jacket for Dean. "Thanks for catching her and bringing her home. I should have been there."

"Does that happen? A lot?" Dean blurted out before his toes got crushed by Sam's boot.

"Stomach flu. First time to have it so bad. Sorry, if I grossed you out. Wasn't too attractive, was it." Liz shut her eyes with a tight smile.

"She's acting brave. She feels like crap. She needs rest." Max rushed to get the guys out of the room.

"My husband, so charming." Liz grimaced as she settled back into bed.

"I get the… stomach flu, a lot." Sam offered. "A cup of coffee and something sweet usually does the trick."

"Thanks." Max nodded and shut the door. "Moron."

"Be nice." Liz whispered. "They were a big help last night."

"Don't remind me." He sat on the edge of the bed. "Should I do something for you?"

"Just hold me."

A few days later…

(November 27, 2006)

"You cannot honestly believe that." Liz shook her head at Sam.

Dean tuned them out as they continued arguing some point of law or another. After another fifteen minutes of guest-chairing at the nerd convention, Dean took it outside. Marty and Bobby were discussing the finer details of the nest of demons they'd nearly had on their hands. Normally, that would interest Dean but tonight he was far lower than he'd ever felt. The things he couldn't put into words crawled around in his head, eating at his soul. The box was strong. He kept it in the trunk of the Impala even though the car was hardly finished. The pictures showed him things he could barely remember.

The fire, he remembered… but vaguely, in flashes of heat and smoke when the occasion rose. But he was four years old when it had happened. Aside from the brief glimpse of his mother in their old house just the year before, he couldn't recall her in something other than that nightgown. She had given him her green eyes. Sometimes in the sun, he looked blonde with hair like hers. Sam had always thought Dean was Dad's favorite but Dean knew that Dad had forced himself to look on the child that looked like his wife. That sometimes, Dad had refused to look at his oldest son because of the resemblance. He was his father's son but Dean knew he looked like Mary Winchester.

The pictures were all old. If Dean had a recent picture, he'd used it to make a fake ID. Pastor Jim had been the last one to take pictures of the Winchesters. Sammy had been seven and Dean had been eleven or twelve. One of the rare moments when they hadn't been hunting something. When they had been in one town for a year. When Sammy had the chance to be in school and get into plays. All Dean remembered was detention and stern lectures from teachers, guidance counselors and principals.

"She's pretty." Liz held up the picture. "You dropped it."

"Crap, I didn't feel it fall." Dean took it from her and dusted off the gravel, taking care not to scratch the picture. "Can't lose these. Irreplaceable."

When Dean seemed to refocus all his attention on the fallen picture, she had to ask. "Who is she?"

There she was. Blond hair and green eyes and a smile like an angel. "My mom."

"Mary?"

"Yeah."

Liz shifted her weight from foot to foot. She was dangerously close to treating Dean like a real person instead of some guy who bugged her at work. "Sam was looking for you. I saw you on my way home."

Dean only shrugged, resting the pictures on the box against his gut. "He knows where to find me."

"Without a barstool glued to your ass?" He had left the door wide open for that one and Liz had jumped at the chance to rag on him the way he insisted on ragging on her.

"You're a funny gal." Dean winked at her as he set the pictures back in their box. Why not use the insult/observation back on those who used it on him.

"It's one of my many charms." She rolled her eyes at him. "Good night, Dean."

* * *

TBC


	8. Chapter 7

Part 7 – A few days later…

(November 30, 2006)

Max brushed his wife's hair out of her face. They lay in bed enjoying the night off and the rain. It had been a quiet day and a quieter night. But they didn't need words. They never needed words. Just a look. She lay on his chest, staring at him. The only light came from the parking lot through the curtains. The rain had stopped some time ago but they hadn't budged. "I love you."

"I love you." Liz whispered it as a challenge, her fingers roaming though she never took her eyes off his.

It was torture but he had to put her plans on hold temporarily. It involved getting dressed and leaving her naked in bed for about twenty minutes but it had to be done. "I have to make a run to the store before you get any further with your plans."

"Do you really have to?" Liz pouted.

"Yes, I do." Max reached for his jeans and his wallet.

Scoffing, she sat up, her mood changing in an instant. "Never mind. My head hurts."

"Liz, come on. Not this again."

--

Sam watched his brother chat up some ladies who had wandered in from the motel. It felt normal enough but it didn't really seem the same. He'd seen Dean work ladies from all sorts of angles, with every trick in the book and still… it just didn't seem the same. "Sammy!" Sam barely glanced up from his seat. "Come meet some very fine ladies."

"Maybe later."

"You're missing out."

"You are such a charmer." One woman cooed, pinching Dean's cheek.

"I do what I can for my little brother. He's rather hapless with the fairer sex." Dean nodded to her chest.

"I don't need help." Sam rolled his eyes and pulled his laptop out of his bag. "I'm getting to work."

"See what I mean? All work and no play makes Sam a very dull boy." Dean tossed a straw at his brother and then leaned in to whisper into the nearest ear.

Sam kept his head ducked until well after Dean had made his exit with whichever woman had lowered her standards enough. Scowling, he plugged himself into several searches but couldn't concentrate on the research. Still, there was no way he was going to get sleep even if he tried, not with Dean's latest conquest taking place.

--

Liz found Sam sitting outside his room, flipping through a small leather bound notebook. Any excuse to lay off the remainder of her fight with Max over the decision to keep using birth control methods of any kind. "Hey."

"Hey." Sam closed the book and looked up. "A little cold for a walk."

"A little cold to be sitting out here." She sat next to him.

"Yeah, well… there's a fire hazard limit or something on these rooms. One more person means a violation." He nodded to the closed door behind him. When he paused, he could almost make something out and he really wished he hadn't heard that.

"Ah, I see. Good for him." She said after a moment, confirming that she had heard it too.

"He's getting back to himself, I guess. It's nice, the attitude… not me sitting outside in the cold." It was lame and in no way excused his brother's behavior but he had to say something to cover the muffled moans and groans.

"Yeah, I guess how it would look that way." She laughed and then nodded to his head jerk in the direction of her room down the way. "Oh, right. My turn. Just another fight with my loving and well-meaning husband."

He paused and gave her a meaningful look. "Doesn't avoiding him mean a delay on the resolution?"

She let out a little laugh. "Ooh, spoken like a man who was intimate with commitment."

"Yeah…" He nodded to himself. "I guess I was."

"I'm sorry." Liz didn't even realize what she'd said until her hand rested on his arm. Immediately, she tried to fix it. "Your tone… You must have… I just assumed. I'm sorry."

"No, you assumed right." Sam frowned at the brunette sitting next to him. "Did you… see something? Like you did with Pete's daughter?"

Liz bit her lip and glanced down at her room where Max was watching from the window. "Don't say anything to anyone. I didn't mean to do it. The words just came out."

"It's okay." Sam lowered his voice and offered her a small smile. "I have that habit, myself. Sometimes I say too much but only because… people have to be warned."

Liz's mind reeled for a moment while she absorbed his words. "Warned?"

"Like Pete. If you hadn't done what you did… Dean would have never gotten there in time with the right supplies. He really needed that gun. That exact gun with that exact ammunition." He searched her face but she wouldn't look at him. "I've gotten there too late, too many times. I welcome all the help I can get."

Liz fought with herself for a few moments. "Don't tell anyone you know about what I did. I like it here. Everyone keeps to themselves but not in a rude way. No one asks too many questions and I don't want them to start. I'm so close to getting M—Nathan to agree to stay. I want a family. If he knows someone found out, we'll have to leave."

"Okay. Okay." He nodded, a little saddened by her plight. But he understood. "I anticipated Dean's demon-fighting needs. That's all it was."

"Demon fighting?" Liz whispered in awe. "So that thing was a…"

"Minor one." Sam opened the journal in his hand to the last page where he and Bobby had made some notes. He had taken it upon himself to add to his father's journal. He would probably catch hell from Dean when he found out but he didn't care at the moment. "You didn't know?"

"I thought it was a person." She whispered as her brain absorbed the concept. "An evil person. Was it really?"

"You don't have to tell anyone. No one would believe you anyway… but this town thrives on underground hunters, like me and Dean."

"And your father." Liz nodded. "That journal is his… was his."

"Right. It was." Sam took a deep breath. It was still hard to believe. Sometimes he thought it was just another one of those times when his father left without a word to go hunt something down. Something too dangerous to include his boys in. In a way, it was still true. Death was just another adventure for John Winchester to embark on without his boys by his side. "It's all we have of him."

"No. You have memories. I know what it's like to lose someone close to you. My parents are still alive but to lose someone you shared secrets with." Liz took his hand in hers. "The pain is powerful and overwhelming."

"Yeah."

They sat in silence while Liz flipped through the journal, catching emotions with every turn of a page. Learning a little bit about her new friends through the eyes of their father when she paused to read passages. Suddenly, she giggled. She clapped a hand over her mouth. "I'm so sorry it's just… It says Dean crawled into your crib every night for months and I know that it was a sad time and I know you were both really young but… I could hardly picture Dean young enough to crawl into a crib."

"It does?" Sam took the journal to read it for himself. "Huh, I guess it does. I read it but I skim. I'm too busy thinking about how sad I am or how mad I am."

"What was it like?" She asked softly. "Dean says you two grew up on the move."

"According to Dad… since I could walk, we moved from town to town, hunting. I never had regular schooling; a semester here, a year there. I got my GED in the end and did the SAT when we stopped through a town that happened to be on the way. I had to sneak away to do it. I hated it; that life. It's why I left for school. It was a big rift between Dad and me. I snuck around to do it. I didn't ask. I didn't even inform him of my decision. I had all but forgotten when we stopped at the address I used to apply. He read it before I could even see what scores I'd gotten and what colleges had accepted me. Stanford."

"Ooh. Stanford." She giggled despite his saddened face. "Dean was right. I have no excuse not to go to college."

"He said that?"

"He said you found a way and that your family was broke."

"Yeah. That's us." Sam took a breath. "I hated the way we were raised but after this past year… I'm grateful. If I had had a normal childhood, I wouldn't have been prepared. Not for what's happened… not for what almost happened to little Yvette." He eyed her. "You're taking this rather well. Dean and I have been met with more… yelling and threats to be incarcerated."

"Well… supposing that I can do what you supposed I can do… I could sense you're telling the truth and I could see your pain."

"Your… gift is much more attuned than mine."

"Maybe it's not the same."

"Maybe. Mine seems to have a mind of its own." He nodded and scooted away slightly when the curtain in her room violently slapped against the pane. "I think you should finish your fight… and Lillian?"

"Yeah?"

"This knowledge I have… doesn't fit in a traditional upbringing. So maybe I placed too high a value on it. Maybe the house, kids and white fence is just an overrated pipe dream for someone who knows what goes bump in the night."

"Maybe." Liz nodded, handed the journal back and climbed to her feet.

"If you ever want to talk about it…"

"I guess the same goes here." She pointed down the walkway. "Wish me luck."

"I think I should be wishing Nathan luck."

The next day…

(December 1, 2006)

"Yes, the best part of fighting is the makeup sex." Liz agreed with Maria as they made the short trek to work.

"I know, we're moving rooms tomorrow. I think the Winchester side of the hotel will be quieter."

"Don't count on it." Liz let loose a laugh as she recalled the night before when she'd been seated within hearing range of Dean's exploits. "Dean, big on mullet rock and sex with strangers. According to Sam, Dean is back to his old whoring ways."

"Dean is a whore?" Maria gasped and giggled. "I just thought he was a flirt."

"Sammy been badmouthing me?" Dean waved at them as they passed on the walkway.

"Sam didn't say anything." Liz cleared her throat. "I heard the soundtrack of your whoring and Sam confirmed it was your usual."

"So what?" He held out his arms. "Now, I'm a bad person?"

"I didn't say that." She pointed out. "You did."

"I knew it." He slapped his pant leg. "You want me. Nathan's going to be upset when he finds out you're stalking me and listening in while I make love."

"You call that making love?" Liz nodded to Maria and gestured to Dean. "Making love."

"I could rock your world." Dean challenged.

"I doubt that… and I can't believe you just said that." She burst out laughing.

"You don't know. Maybe you're missing out."

"Trust me. She's not." Maria patted his chest and scooted passed. "I share a wall with the happy couple."

Later that week…

(December 7, 2006)

Liz laughed as Sam tried to teach Isabel to throw darts. She was failing though Liz knew Isabel could use her powers to win. Max kissed her shoulder. They sat on a stool at a table near the pool table. She leaned back against him. "We should have pictures of us… going out and having fun."

"You think?"

"So we always remember the good times." She whispered. "Part of what helped me deal with… Alex… was the fact that I had so many pictures to remind me of the good times. When we're old and gray… I want to have some proof that we had fun here."

"I see." Max nodded and picked up a napkin. Then he plucked the pen from her back pocket. He set to work in a series of short dashes.

"What are you drawing?"

"You'll see." He turned her face away. "You can't look until it's done."

Dean slipped by them on his way to the pool table, his eye caught by 'Lillian's' attempts to see what 'Nathan' was doing. Nathan used a pen the way some famous artist dude used paints. "Shit… that's good."

"What is?" Liz tried to pry Max's hand out of the way but he just clamped it over her eyes.

"Are you an artist or something, Nathan?" Dean watched the image materialize and it was damn good.

"I have a good memory." Max pulled his hand off his wife's face and handed her his masterpiece. "It's the way she looked the day she became my wife."

"I love it!" She planted a sound kiss on him. "Can you draw one of us together?"

"I can try."

"We didn't have pictures taken. We eloped." Liz explained briefly as she examined her napkin portrait.

"Maybe later." Max promised. "I don't want to draw our wedding photo on a napkin."

"Yeah. Use your time off to try to beat me at pool." Dean gestured to the game ending in front of them.

"Absolutely not." Liz shook her head. "If you play one of us, it will be me. My husband barely knows which end of the cue to chalk."

"Ouch." Max complained softly.

"Well, it's true. You suck." She kissed him gently. "I'll make you proud."

"Kick his ass." Max nodded his approval and settled in to watch the game.

Dean moved around the table to rack up the balls. "Ok. Sure. I'll even let you break."

"I'm warning you, I'm good." Liz plucked an appropriately sized cue from the rack on the wall.

"I'll bet you haven't been playing as long as I have." He taunted as he chalked his own cue.

"Have it your way." Liz flashed a smile at her husband before bending over the end of the table to break the set. She glanced up at Dean as two colored balls sank into the pockets. "Longevity is no indication of skill." It was a quick game as Liz circled the table, knocking the colored balls into their cozy pockets, throwing in a trick shot she hadn't used in years. Sinking the cue ball, she turned to Dean. "So, you've been playing at $20 a ball, right?"

"Rematch." Dean shook his head, trying hard to hide his surprise at that display. He crossed his arms over his cue. "I didn't know I was playing a shark."

"I warned you." Liz held out her hand for the money. "And I knew I was playing a shark."

"You lost, Dean. Fair and square… and to a girl. Dad would be so proud." Sam called over. "I saw the whole thing."

"Back talk, I see. Pick up a cue, Sammy."

"Aw, come on, Dean." Sam groaned but handed the darts to Isabel.

"You come on. Do you even play anymore?" Dean jeered at his little brother. "Smart way to make a buck. I know you learned but do you remember?"

"Bring it on." Sam grabbed an appropriate sized cue and tossed a chalk up into the air, catching it quickly and dusting the end of the cue.

"I think we're going to head out." Max announced, pulling Liz from the table. "She gets hooked and she'll play all night."

"Nathan." Liz whined but collected her winnings from a reluctant Dean and joined her husband for the walk home. It was a short but warm walk as they walked wrapped in each other's arms. They entered the room and got ready for bed, with all the little routines that they had settled into over time.

Max frowned when he caught Liz tucking her winnings into her inside purse pocket. "How much do you have in there?"

"Some." Liz settled onto the bed. "Enough for a deposit and first month's rent someplace affordable."

"Liz…" He sighed but slipped in beside her. "Let me think on it? Okay? Before you go putting down deposits and signing leases. A few days to scope for signs that it's okay to settle down here."

"You'll get a few days. I promise. I'm not in a rush. I just… plan ahead."

* * *

TBC 


	9. Chapter 8

Part 8 – The following summer…

(July 4, 2007)

Max leaned against the wall behind the bar with his eyes closed. He could hear the fireworks outside but each pop and crack was a jolt to his soul. Liz had tried to comfort him but he just wanted to be alone. The bar was nearly empty on account of the light show. Michael was puttering around in the kitchen, tossing things around at random just so he would have something to pick up. Isabel had bought a disposable phone then disappeared into the room she shared with Maria. Maria, Kyle and Liz were watching the festivities with Marty and Bobby and apparently Sam Winchester.

Dean had propped his feet up on the table, flicking peanuts at the tinted window as the tiny pin points of light shone through before falling to the ground far out into the night. "I hate this holiday."

"Join the club." Max muttered, rubbing his face to wake himself up. The downside to being by himself was boredom.

"Not a fan of Uncle Sam?" Dean pulled on his beer.

Understatement. "Not so much."

"My brother loves it. Always used to bug Dad to watch the show when we were kids, no matter where we were." Dean shook his head. Dad had always stopped for a bit or opened the window with a view. Dean vaguely remembered one night when they were in the middle of nowhere. They could see the light shows from four different towns at the same time as they drove the space between. It was always a random thought and Dean had often wondered why, if the towns were so close that you could see the other's light show, they didn't just have one joint show for everyone instead of four individual ones that inevitably ate up more cash.

"My wife." Max nodded that he understood the need for someone else to enjoy something he couldn't. "Her family was always big on the holidays that made cash for their restaurant. She gets excited… and I have to make sure she'll see it."

"How about I buy us a round?" Dean sat up and held his glass out to 'Nathan.'

"I don't drink." Max shook his head but poured Dean his drink.

"Can I ask why?"

How to put the situation in a way that the layman would understand… "I have… severe reactions to alcohol."

"Uh… yeah. You and everyone on the planet. That's why there are alcoholics. Come on. One glass."

"One glass or one drop. I black out. I don't remember a thing and I do dangerous things according to others. I can't drink." Max shrugged and didn't regret it one bit. He already had everything he needed. He wouldn't risk it for a night, not even to relax.

"Seriously?" Dean made a face. "One drop?"

"Well, it was one sip." Max conceded.

"Wuss."

"It's genetic."

"Okay, fine. If you don't drink, what do you do for fun?" Dean took a deep swallow of beer. "Assuming you know how?"

"If we have two nights off in a row, I'll drive Lillian over to Dobson. They have a dance club. She likes to dance." He shrugged.

Dean settled himself in for a conversation. A real conversation with someone he didn't know so well. He hadn't had one of those in longer than he cared to admit. "How did she learn to play pool like that?"

Max had to smile. "It took me six years to get that one out of her. She had a babysitter who worked in this restaurant we had back home. This absurd Mexican-Chinese-Burger place with pool tables and pinball machines in the back. Babysitter used to let her go in all the time and play. She kicked my ass on our first date."

"She's a deadly weapon."

"She can be. Don't ever play miniature golf with her, either. She knows all the bank shots by heart." Max grinned as he recalled that outing when they were getting reacquainted with each other after her stint in the girls' academy and his recent death and resurrection.

"Didn't plan to but I'll keep that under advisement." Dean pointed to the pool table. "Want to learn to play like a man? So the next time you get a challenge you don't have to let your wife take over?"

Max laughed a little. "Sure."

--

Sam sat on top of the van with his new friends. He didn't want to get too close to them, not after the way the rest of his friendships had gone after rejoining the family business, but they were nice to hang out with when he and Dean passed though Valor Springs to fix up the Impala, which still wasn't running the way Dean liked. Stan, Mary and Lillian sat behind him and laughed while Stan told jokes. All Sam could think about was that night, years ago, when Dad had driven all night somewhere but had woken them up to watch the night sky lit up in all directions from towns somewhere just out of sight. The sky had exploded that night through the rear windshield which had been freshly cleaned that morning. He could remember the awe of the sight, warm in the backseat with Dean, Dad ruffling their hair when the works died down and it was time to go back to sleep. One of those rare moments when he hadn't hated his father. When he hadn't resented their life on the road. Maybe it was even before he had been aware enough to resent their life.

"Sam!" Mary called in his ear. "Stan wants to know if you're hungry! That is, unless you've been possessed by a pod person or somehow gone deaf from listening to too much crappy mullet rock!"

"I can always eat and don't let Dean hear you disparage his brain damage of choice." He smiled and hopped down with Stan to trek to the concession stand just a bit down the way. His stomach turned at the thought of the greasy food but it was what he lived on most of his life aside from the weeks here and there when they were parked in a speck of a town while Dad hunted down some demon or ghost. Those years at Stanford were cherished while he learned to cook something that didn't involve wrappers and microwaves.

"I needed a break from the estrogen. You're not living up to your end of the bargain." 'Stan' complained while they waited in line. "I spend every day with them. I need another man around to balance things out."

"Nathan and Gary?"

"They don't do the Fourth." Stan shook his head. "They mope and groan and so the girls leave them in Amanda's hands and away we go to see the light show."

"Sounds like Dean." Sam shook his head again. He never had quite figured out why Dean was so down on the Fourth.

"I need to, like, study that guy. He gets seriously laid when he wants to." Kyle made a face. "I mean, seriously."

"That's Dean." Sam agreed. "Everywhere we go, he can call up some girl he met the time before or easily get the number of someone new. I couldn't do that, not even if I wanted to."

"You could but you don't want to." Kyle repeated, incredulously.

"Maybe."

--

"I learned to drive in that Impala. '67 and even though it's rebuilt, it's all American." Dean pointed to the window, on the other side of which was his precious Impala. "Dad's had it since I was a kid, maybe even before I was a thought in his head, you know… Spent all my life riding in that thing. Working on it and keeping it in one piece."

"My dad and I rebuilt the engine on this Jeep… but neither of us were mechanics. There was always something going wrong with it. The first car I outright owned, myself, was a Chevelle." Max clinked his cherry coke with Dean's beer mug in celebration of the Chevrolet automobile manufacturing corporation. They had been playing for a bit and Max had picked it up so quickly, Dean had accused him of lying about sucking at it. So they sat and watched the works through the tinted window. Michael had refused to come out of the kitchen. He was, instead, torturing four burgers on the stove.

"My dad… a Marine in his day." Dean explained about his Chevy. "'Buy American' was his motto."

"Dad's a lawyer from a small town." Max countered, feeling a tad contact-buzzed. "He was all about instilling character. That entailed a discovery of manhood through attempting to fix a piece a crap."

"Lilly's dad?"

"He would go out of his way to get her the best. He couldn't always afford the best but he'd get her the best he could." Max shook his head while he remembered the good and bad about his father-in-law. "She never had a car though. He couldn't afford to buy her one and I never let her drive the Jeep… I was hesitant to let her drive the Chevelle. We have a padded seat we put on the van for Lillian and Mary… but don't let them hear you call it a booster seat even though that's exactly what it is."

Dean had a laugh at that. That got him thinking about the last time he'd had a conversation with Lillian. "A while back, Lilly told me you guys were trying to buy a place."

"Is that what she said?" Max shook his head. "I know she wants it. She deserves it but I'm not sure about settling down here. I don't like living out of the motel. Leases and deposits and all that stuff. If we have to leave all of a sudden…"

"What you need to do is go through a person, not a realtor." Dean offered the advice. "My father did it all the time when we were growing up. Bobby has a guesthouse. I think he fills it with junk but he let us live in it once. It has all the works. It was barely big enough for a man and two kids but it should be enough for a couple for a while."

"I'll look into it. I don't like her miserable." Max sobered a bit on that thought. He really wanted his wife as happy as he could make her. Liz wasn't a complainer but she did have wishes and wants for the future that she made plain when he was willing to listen.

"God… you're a good guy, Nathan. Too good a guy." Dean shook his head at the obviously whipped man beside him.

"You're not so bad, yourself. Dean."

"Mind passing on word to your wife? I'm always afraid I'll get a beer with extra foam if you know what I mean."

"She wouldn't do that. My wife is not a spitter." Max narrowed his eyes as he thought about it. "She's more likely to not so accidentally trip while bringing by a pitcher or a glass."

--

"Why don't you and Mary ever hook up?"

"Besides Gary being an issue… I like her. She's pretty. She's funny but…" Kyle shuddered at the thought. "My dad and her mom have been seeing each other off and on for years. It'd be like incest."

"I see. So you considered it?" Sam grinned with a chuckle.

"For nine seconds sophomore year. Then I set my eyes on Lillian." Kyle let a nostalgic grin drift over his face. That summer had been a fun one. The last truly fun summer he'd had as a teenager before the 'alien invasion'.

"You and Lillian?" Sam snorted at the idea of that.

"Yeah. So?" Kyle tossed a handful of popcorn at some kids tossing firecrackers at the van. "Git! I know where you kids live! And more importantly… I know your Parents!"

"She just seems like…" Like she'd never seen another man before or after laying eyes on her husband.

"Believe me, I was her man before Nathan went and… stole her from me."

"He didn't steal me." 'Lillian' scoffed from where she and 'Mary' were collecting some tasty treats to take back to their men and Isabel.

"Yeah, right. You were all over me until you saw into his soul or whatever." Kyle stared at her for a minute. "Which I came to realize was complete crap after that… business with him and the evil bitch from hell."

"Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night, Stan." Liz called over.

"Fine. So long as we're clear." Kyle pointed a finger at her. "Anyway. Me and the Hair are moving rooms at the end of the week. Montoya is bug-bombing the rooms so the ones on the other side are gonna be open and free of cockroaches. You and the Cheese have a couple of days to make up your minds about the house on Claiborne."

"You guys are renting a house?" Sam burst in.

"We're thinking about it. Nathan isn't sure yet." Liz sighed heavily. "I really just want a space where we can live like people. You remember what we were talking about, Sam? Nathan and a lease aren't exactly copasetic… and that seems to be the hold up."

"Right." Sam nodded to 'Lillian's' allusion to her gift and her running all over the country. "Bobby has that cottage in the back. It's actually more like a guesthouse when he clears all the crap out of it. Dean and I lived in it for a while once. With three people, it was a tight fit and smelly. But for you and Nathan… it could be cozy."

"I'll have to run it by Nathan. Ugh and we'll have to find a way to ask Bobby. He's not exactly the nicest of guys, you know."

"I'll put in a good word. Bobby is a nice guy. You just don't know how to deal with him yet." Sam shrugged. "I'm going to find some libation. Anyone want?"

"I do." Kyle nodded.

"Looky what I found." Maria grinned. "It's a camera with… oh… only three pictures taken on it. Smile real pretty guys."

--

Isabel poked at her burger. "I like my hamburgers in patty form."

"Eat it." Michael grumbled.

"No. I want it in a patty. It's going to fall out when I pick it up." She pointed to the loose meat on her plate.

"Eat it, Princess." He muttered as he ate his own loose meat burger.

"I'll make you a new one." Max offered and got to his feet. He kissed her head and took her plate from her. He dumped the contents onto Michael's plate, who only grunted.

"You're his sister but I don't even see a hint of a resemblance." Dean commented as he made do with his bordering on sloppy burger.

"Thank you." Isabel sipped her water. "I wouldn't want to actually look like my brother."

"They have the same ass." Michael mumbled.

"Screw you." Isabel tossed a stack of napkins at him.

"Just saying. I like my ladies with an ass."

"Mary doesn't have an ass." She pointed out.

"Mary has other attributes that more than make up for the lack of ass." Michael explained to Dean. "I don't know if you've noticed, if you have just stay silent cause I don't want to kick your ass, but Mary is a talker."

Dean nodded and sipped his beer in acknowledgement he knew what Michael was getting at. Isabel stared between them for a long moment. Then she tossed the rest of the napkins at them and left the table. "You guys are disgusting."

"You're hanging out with us instead of your best friend." Michael tossed over his shoulder. She never returned a comeback.

"She said she called her husband." Dean offered Michael who had started to look worried. "She didn't say more than that when she came in."

"Oh. She told you about him?"

"What?" Dean blinked at him.

"She doesn't talk about him. Not even to us." Michael shrugged and started on his second burger.

"Does she ever see him?"

"Not really."

"Then why are they still married?"

"They love each other… or something." Michael shrugged again. He had always figured Jesse for a rebound guy.

"Another waste." Dean sighed and barely looked up when their dinner party resumed.

"This is a hamburger." Isabel displayed her new burger to Michael. "Solid throughout. Juicy because of it."

"I get it. Eat your burger." Michael mumbled.

Max set a fresh beer bottle in front of Dean before taking his own seat to finish his cooled burger. Discreetly, he reheated the mess. His cherry coke stared at him. He shouldn't be moping. He had a lot of the answers he hadn't when he was a kid and the Fourth still depressed him. He had a whole new set of questions and worries. Still. All his life the Fourth had been the day that marked the death of his predecessors. If he looked in a mirror, he knew he no longer looked like the quiet boy who had saved the life of a waitress that day nearly seven years ago. His hair was longer, his clothes weren't nearly as well kempt as they were in high school, and his jewelry had expanded to include a bracelet, a wedding band and a necklace. All three of those had been gifts from his wife. His smiling wife who bounded into the bar smelling like ash and the fields… and a little bit of something else. "Have fun?"

"It was great. You really should have come." She settled into his lap. "You're just now eating?"

"I had to cook Isabel a replacement burger. Gary got a little carried away with his aggressions on the beef." He pointed to the mess on his own plate.

"You are such a good brother." Liz planted a loud kiss on his mouth.

"Have you been drinking?" Max sat up, finally placing the smell on his wife's breath.

"I'm fine." Liz bit her lip. "I only had a sip. I promise."

"I had a six pack." Kyle grinned stupidly and picked French fries off Isabel's plate. "Thanks for your concern."

"You drunk, too, Sammy?" Dean leaned back in his chair.

"Nah. They're lightweights." Sam shook his head.

"I drank a lot." Maria took a seat next to Michael. "A lot."

"I only had a sip." Liz promised again. "Headache."

"Are you okay?" Max cupped her cheek.

"It's just something you have to do tomorrow. It can wait for a bit. I'm not done having fun." Liz leaned back into him. "It's a small thing, really. It'll help in the long run."

"Oh, ho, ho. I found a camera in the field." Maria grinned. "You guys. We have to make some memories."

--

Sam stretched out on the bed, his wallet a good deal heavier than Dean's had ended up being that night. He could hear the clink of the bottle as it was lifted and set back down on the nightstand sip after sip. The light was starting to burn the side of his face. "Hey, man. Mind turning that out."

"I do mind. Go to sleep, Sammy."

"It's Sam and what are you doing?" He lifted his head to find Dean reclined against the wall with the box of photos opened and spread out. "What are you doing, Dean?"

"Just trying to remember if I ever liked the fourth of July." Dean brooded once again over the family he didn't get to keep.

"Not since I can remember, dude."

"But why? You grew up the same as me and you love it."

"You're older than me, Dean. There are probably a few Julies that you can remember better than I can." Sam sat up to really look at his brother. Dean had had fun tonight. He'd been drinking all night before everyone got back from the fireworks show but he hadn't drank more than a beer or two during all the darts, cards and pool.

"I think I used to like it. I kind of remember being little and writing my name in sparklers with Mom but… I can't remember when I started hating it." Dean took a long pull and dredged his memory for the years and the happenings and the scars. "I remember that year we watched it in the car with Dad. I still liked it then, I think, but I hadn't seen it for a while before then. I don't know how old we were."

"When Dad took that back road?"

"Yeah. He woke us up because you'd been bugging for days about it. You were talking by then, I guess. No younger than five or six, I think." He furrowed his brow as he struggled to remember.

"That's five or six years between a July with Mom and that night, Dean." He could tell it was really bugging his brother. "How long did we stay in Lawrence?"

"A few years, I guess. You were potty trained and all that when we left Lawrence for good. I think we popped fireworks that first summer. It kind of blurs, you know? I just tried to block out as much about Lawrence as possible. I know we did it the first year after she died. I popped one in my hand. It hurt, bad." Dean tried to remember anything that happened after his sixth birthday.

"Do you think it was something bad? I mean, worse than a firecracker in hand?"

"I don't know. Dad was never much for holidays after she died. We barely had birthdays and Christmas. We had one Thanksgiving with Bobby and one with Pastor Jim. Until you started talking, I can't remember Fourth of July." Dean pinched the bridge of his nose. "But I had fun, tonight. We could see them from inside the bar. Just barely… and I didn't hate them too much."

"Hey Dean…" Sam had been rolling the idea through his brain for a few minutes. "After I turned nine or ten… Dad stopped letting us watch the fireworks. Like he just forgot or something. I remember realizing that it had passed and that we hadn't watched them. I hardly knew what day of the week it was then. Maybe you can't remember seeing them because you didn't."

That comment made a laugh come out in a bark. "That would figure, right?" That was probably it. He hadn't bugged like Sam had. Hadn't talked for a long time after Mom died. Hadn't… "He was gone. Researching. Stashed us with a friend while he was chasing down leads. He was gone." It all clicked. That second year after Mom had died; Fourth of July meant that Dad wouldn't be around. He was gone all summer that year. They had to stay behind because Sammy was just a baby and couldn't be on the road. That Fourth of July was spent missing Dad. Some following Fourths had been spent the same way. "He is gone. He's gone."

Sam could only nod. Dean was the son who had stayed behind; who had been abandoned when Dad had split to hunt down the demon on his own; who had been betrayed by the man who had sworn to protect them. Sam had walked away, had run away. Dean had stayed. Stayed with a man who would abandon him again without a word.

"Okay. Enough Joy Luck Club. Find us something in the morning, Sammy. I gotta kill something soon."

* * *

TBC 


	10. Chapter 9

Part 9 – The following day…

(July 5, 2007)

Max stared at Liz. "You want me to what?"

"It should be easy." Liz explained as she paced the room. It was absurd but her visions weren't getting any more coherent. If she didn't do what they said, who knew what consequences that could have. "They have it just laying around. Stealing it would be doing them a favor. I could tell you exactly how to get to it. You just have to get your hands on it and use some old fashioned metalworking to shape it into something else."

He'd barely had his morning coffee when Liz had started rambling about trespassing, theft, and metalworking. It would be almost funny if she weren't so dead serious about the whole thing. "Are you still drunk?"

"I was never drunk. I just had a sip." She sank into the chair. "It's not like it has to be done today. It'll be there for a while. I just… thought you should know."

"What good will it do us?"

"I don't know, Max." She bit out and stared at him. "Let's say you can't affect depleted uranium. Neither could Nasedo and I'd wager Kal can't either. Your enemies would be limited the same way."

"Okay. We can't manipulate its shape. It doesn't mean it's like a silver bullet."

"I never said that." She sighed and covered her face with her hands. "I don't know why, Max. I just know we should."

"Okay." He pulled her chair to the end of the bed where he sat. "Okay. Let's just focus on what we would do with it after we had it. What shape would be best?"

"I was just thinking. Like knives or crowbars. If say, an alien got stabbed, he couldn't just… poof it out of his body. It would leave residue and the wound might not be able to close up. It might slow him down. Distract him long enough for…"

"Right. Okay. I'm sorry if it sounded like I was jumping all over you." He ran his hands up her arms. "I'd almost forgotten what you'd said last night and… I'm sorry."

"It's going to take a while to plan your trip out there." She offered lamely.

"Yes it will."

She felt stupid but she could feel that Max was fully awake and at least partway understanding everything she had said. It had kept her up most of the night. "I didn't feel like it was immediately urgent… just that it should be done."

"Okay. I trust you. When I find out where this place is, Michael and I will go."

--

Bobby stared at the boys. "You plan this?"

"What?" Sam furrowed his brow. So what if he and Dean had given the same housing option to Nathan and Lillian separately. It was a good idea for more than the obvious reasons. "Lillian mentioned she was looking for a place to set down some roots. I mentioned that maybe you could be persuaded to empty that building out back."

"I don't want civilians traipsing all over my property. I've got a hundred of these things all over the property." Bobby pointed to the ceiling where he had the circle they'd used on the Meg-Demon not so long ago. "They could mess up my salt circles… and I wouldn't know nothing about it until a demon or a spirit was killing me dead."

"They'd pay cash." Dean shrugged his shoulders. He was already bored with the topic and they were here for more than one reason. "You can always use cash, Bobby."

"They're quiet. Keep to themselves. They aren't nosy." Sam offered up. "And again, they pay cash."

"The book is upstairs, third door, Dean." Bobby gestured to the stairs. "If I get you the information you're looking for, maybe you'll leave me alone."

"Thanks, Bobby." Dean pounded his way up the stairs.

"I just said I'd bring it up." Sam examined the desk and the photos that lined the spaces between stacks of books. When Dean disappeared up the stairs, he cleared his throat. "It's not like they don't know something about what this town is built on, Bobby."

"Oh yeah?" Bobby grunted and wiped his hands on a rag before searching for a book on his crowded shelves. "How's that?"

"You remember that troll-imp thing?"

"I remember the troll-imp thing." Bobby clicked his teeth together. "Nasty son of a bitch. Still can't believe none of us knew it was there. If it weren't for you and your brother…"

"Actually, if it weren't for Lillian Sparks…" Sam let the sentence fall.

"What's that?" Bobby set the books down and turned to face Sam Winchester fully. He had just done what used to piss him off about John Winchester. Leading with something irresistible to make a point about what wasn't going to be revealed until a promise was made.

"I'm saying that… everyone got a head's up that night and if it weren't for the way things fell, that little girl… well, you know better than anyone what would have happened to her."

"You're telling me that little Lillian Sparks had something to do with that?" Bobby shook his head. "She wasn't even there."

"No, she wasn't. She was puking her guts out and making things happen… Like, telling somebody to tell Pete to head home early before his wife could make the phone call about Yvette going missing. Like telling Dean to get over here before any one of us had called him out because Pete was flipping out. Like getting someone to tell me that Dean needed his shotgun and rock salt shells before we even knew the troll-imp thing was manipulating spirits as guards. If any one of those things hadn't happened, no one would have gotten to her in time." Sam watched Bobby work the events over in his mind. "I'm just saying that she's one of the good guys and she wants to stay here. If you could see that she gets a place on a piece of property that is regularly updated on spiritual barriers…"

"Is she some kind of pre-cog? Like a psychic?" Bobby turned that over in his head for a minute.

"I don't think she really knows how she does what she does. She saw something bad and she got people to stop it from happening but… she didn't know what it was. I told her it was a minor demon… to ease her into the idea. That troll… was nasty business."

"So what? She did us a favor and now I have to reciprocate?"

"I only said I'd put in a good word. I probably don't have permission to tell you what I did about her but… Dean and I don't have all the connections that Dad had. Having some friends with gifts like this… will come in handy." He tried to appeal to Bobby's survivalist instincts. "Not only for us but probably for you, too. A lot of Dad's friends were on a hit list after we got our hands on that damned gun. The Demon got to them before we could do anything about it. Maybe it's like our way of making sure that doesn't happen to you."

"If she didn't own up to being the hero that day… what makes you think she'll warn me if the demon is coming for me? Sure Stan has worked here for a few years but she don't know me from Adam."

"It's Lillian Sparks, Bobby. She's a good person. She can't help herself." Sam offered a tight smile and a shrug. "It's up to you but… Marty likes Nathan. You ask him what he thinks of them."

"Found it." Dean lumbered down the stairs. "Thanks, Bobby. Big help. Sammy! Let's get going."

"It's Sam." He bit out but followed his brother out the door.

Four days later.

(July 9, 2006)

Liz sat and fingered the framed picture that Max had given her for their anniversary. He had obviously spent a lot of time on it. It was ten times better than the napkin he'd drawn of her earlier in the year. Tears escaped her eyes as she traced its lines.

"Do you like it?"

"I love it." She smiled through the tears. "I was happy that day. So happy."

"Are you still happy?" Max asked softly.

"I am." She threw her arms around him and kissed him soundly. Before she knew it, he was setting the frame aside and guiding her onto her back on the bed. "Ooh… Christening the bed already?"

"First the bed, then the floor, then the kitchenette, then the floor outside the bathroom, then the shower…" Max nudged her chin with his nose so he could have access to her neck. "If it can be managed, that is."

"It's a tiny bathroom but we'll just have to be very, very close."

--

Marty scribbled down the message and blinked at it. "Hey Dean, this isn't gonna piss Bobby off, right?"

"He's got a protection circle against it." Dean turned his head to keep an eye on the surroundings. "Sam says that this thing targets spiritual librarians and I'd say that Bobby could pass for one."

"That he could. Some of this stuff… we don't have around here."

"Sam thought that might be a problem. Bobby could always send Pete to make a run to Dobson. I really wouldn't want Bobby to leave his house until we kill this thing. We still don't have all the info on this thing."

"So, that's what you guys took off to find, huh?"

"We didn't think it was anything at first but then we noticed the victims all had pretty extensive occult libraries and not the new agey shit. It was all the real deal, what all we could get our hands on. The cops aren't taking it seriously. They just figure these guys were devil worshipers and got what they had coming."

"Shit."

"That's what I said."

"No, if they come for Bobby, they'll kill half my staff, too. These fuckers aren't picky when it comes to killing off anyone near this shit."

"So what? Bobby closes the shop for a few days."

"No, Dean. You and your brother convinced Bobby to let Nate and Lillian rent that back cottage. This morning was moving day."

"Well, tell them to take a walk."

"Do you know for sure that it's coming for Bobby?"

"The thing is cutting a swath through the middle of the country and you guys are right in its path. We're gonna try to kill it before it heads that way but… you and I know that not every fight is a win."

"Don't talk like that, Dean Winchester. Your pa'd wring your neck."

"Yeah, well. Dad would know more than anyone else that even the best hunter's days are numbered. Warn them before it's too late, Marty." Dean shut his phone and headed back inside the station. He flashed his fake badge at the woman who had come on shift since he'd been outside. "Look, I just talked to my superior and if I can't look at the body or the files, it's gonna happen again."

"This is a small town, Agent…"

"Livgren." Dean filled in for her. "I've been trying all day to get into this case but your people are not cooperating. This is the third. Three deaths, all related, in this state alone."

"Really?" She looked back at the police chief who had been listening around the corner. The chief didn't look happy.

"What do you need?" The chief stepped into full view with his cup of coffee.

"I need a list of all the books found in the house. Then I need to know what you did with them."

The older man snorted. "It was all a bunch of hocus pocus."

"Maybe but do you want this whole thing to get thrown out of court because you couldn't be bothered to keep track of the evidence?"

"This guy had a house full of devil books. Seriously, Agent Livgren."

"Seriously. Maybe some guy is doing us a favor but… word is… there has been some crossfire in other states. People walking at the wrong time and wrong place. People who don't hold with hocus-pocus. People who didn't know about the hocus pocus."

"I'm sure we made a list. I'll find it."

"Good. I'll be back." Dean stormed out of the station and scanned the street for his brother. Sam was flipping through a book on a park bench. "Sammy!"

"Did they have the title on the inventory?" Sam groaned as he continued his search.

"Don't know yet but I've seen that book at Bobby's. I know I have. This guy had a copy too."

"It would figure right?" Sam snorted as he rubbed his temples. "The guy writes the book and gets murdered by a fanatic… then the ghost of the guy goes around killing everyone who owns the last ten copies."

"We have six. I think Bobby has the seventh… the guy in the morgue had the eighth. That makes two more that we have to find."

"Do you think Pastor Jim had a copy?"

"Can't get a hold of anyone in that neck of the wood. All of Caleb's shit is in storage and if he had a copy, it'd be there." Dean stared around. "Hopefully we don't have to go save the owner of a storage unit. Hopefully we find the guy's bones and build a nice salty bonfire."

"Does Marty know where Bobby is?"

"Yeah, I'll bet he was helping Nathan move in to the guesthouse."

"Dean." Sam blinked at his brother. "You have to get them out of there. If this spirit hops over us and targets some other book-holder like Bobby, they're screwed."

"Why would it go there? We have six books in the trunk. Six. It's got two people right here. We need to get that book from them before it kills some cop and we get blamed or some shit. We don't have time to be calling after everyone within a mile radius of one of these things."

Sam shook his head and yanked out his cell phone. "Come on… pick up."

--

Liz held onto her husband as he caught his breath. It had taken her a moment to realize it but they hadn't used anything. She knew it wouldn't escape his attention for long and he was likely to make a run before they would continue to bless their new home but she intended to enjoy the thought while it lasted. Her phone danced on the nightstand but she ignored it. Whoever it was could wait until tomorrow. Today was her fifth wedding anniversary.

Max kissed her bare shoulder before shifting off her body and onto the bed beside her. "Do you want to head over to Dobson tonight?"

"Mmm… maybe this weekend. I just want to spend today with you." A chill passed through her body but she shook it off and ran her hands over his chest. "Maybe we hit the shower, next."

"Okay. I'll go get the water started. Bobby said it might be a little tough to get the water heater working. I might have to do some magic." Max pressed a kiss to her lips before he was up and crossed the hardwood floor, his feet thumping against the floorboards.

Liz shivered again as her phone danced again. Groaning, she leaned over to pick it up. The number didn't look familiar but she picked up anyway. "Hello?"

"Lillian, thank god. It's Sam. Look. I don't know where Bobby is but you have to do something for me. Get out of the house for a few days. Until I call you back and tell you it's okay." Sam rushed out.

"What? What are you talking about?" Liz shook her head. "Today's my anniversary. We just got moved in. We're not going anywhere today."

"Seriously. It's not safe."

"Not safe?" She sighed heavily. "Sam?"

"I need you to trust me on this. Bobby's got some pretty powerful protection circles in the house but not out in the guesthouse. You aren't safe right now."

"Can't we just do one of these protection circles out here?" Liz kept her voice low and her eyes peeled for her husband's figure. She wasn't sure how well sound carried in the little cottage.

"I can't convince you to leave."

"No. If I tell him that it's not safe in here, then it's not safe anywhere."

Sam glanced at Dean who looked like he was hiding a gloat. "Okay. This is bare minimum stuff. I don't know how well it will work against this thing. Once you do it, you don't leave until I call again. Okay?"

"Sam?"

"Have you cleaned out the cabinets yet?"

"No."

"Then it's possible there's some rock salt in there. Table salt might work but I wouldn't count on it. Rock salt is best. You line every door window and vent with it. If you've got enough, I'd line every wall and keep some on hand."

"Rock salt? Like the stuff you used on those spirits?"

"Exactly." He blew out a breath. "Lillian… if the lights start flickering for no reason or you start feeling like maybe you aren't alone, you have two choices; you beat on Bobby's door until he lets you in or you run down to the church. Marty might keep you but I don't want more people involved in this."

"Okay. I understand." Liz nodded as she pulled Max's shirt over her head and began opening the cabinets. She had expected to find the rock salt he spoke of but all she saw were two webbed over canisters like the ones she'd seen in the garage office from time to time. She almost turned away but something made her grab one and twist the cap off. Rock salt. "How did you know the salt would be here?"

"It was a guess. The last time we stayed with Bobby, we left in a hurry… Dad always thought we forgot something there. Do you have enough?"

"I think so." Liz eyed the door and the windows.

"Okay. Thick lines from corner to corner. No breaks."

"Got it." Liz shut her phone and set to the task while Max fought with the water in the bathroom.

--

Dean's eyes ran over the graveyard. The markers were old. The plots uncared for. It was going to make his search difficult. Plot J9. J9. He counted rows. He counted plots but the damned headstone was not at all easy to read. He glanced around once more and then raised the shovel. "Well. This better be you or a few people are going to be in for a surprise in the morning."

--

Sam counted the books. Seven. They had seven now. He adjusted the shotgun under his arm as he locked up the book with the other copies. Three to go or at least until Dean salted the grave and burned the bones. He just hoped that Lillian and Nathan were willing to follow his advice and leave the property anyway.

--

Liz settled onto the bed with a cup of tea and peered over Max's shoulder, he was studying a map from an atlas he'd appropriated from the library. "Some kid might need that for a report."

"Not until the fall. I plan to have it all scanned by then." Max arched his back under her touch as she rubbed his spine.

"Did you find it?"

"Yeah…" He slid the book over so she could see the map. "The repository is in this town here. It's gonna take months of planning. It's not so big that we would be missed driving through in broad daylight."

"Okay. But you have time. I just…"

"Figured it couldn't hurt. I know." He looked her over. "How's your back?"

"Not good. The shower is now off limits." She shivered when he placed a warm healing hand on her back, soothing the sore muscles. "We'll just have to make due with every other surface in here."

"I think we can do that." His eyes flicked to the window where he could see Bobby moving around. "While you were steaming your back… I saw Bobby laying out pesticide. I don't know why he didn't wait until tomorrow."

"Bugs would seriously crimp all the fun we're going to have in here tonight." Liz teased as she sipped her tea.

--

Dean had just finished salting the bones and pouring lighter fluid over the whole mess when he was sent flying back into the mound of dirt behind him. Frantically he searched his pockets for a lighter or matches but came up empty. "Good one, Dean. Go digging up graves without fire."

His body rose off the ground and he went flying back several plots away from his shotgun. He heard footsteps and he hoped it wasn't the cops. Scrambling to his feet, he ducked back to the ground when he heard the gunshot. Sammy. "Dude, we need fire."

"That's what I was about to tell you." Sam peered into the grave. He tried to balance the gun while searching his pockets. Surely he had some matchbooks from a bar or a hotel. He usually grabbed a few.

"Sammy!" Sam glanced up in time to see the spirit appearing right in front of him. He fired a shot through it and tossed the empty gun to the ground as he emptied his jacket pockets. A matchbook. Finally. He lit one and used it to ignite the whole pack and tossed it inside the gaping hole in the ground. The fire lit up the surrounding area with a glow and crackle. Dean hobbled over from where he'd been laid out. "Well… I think we should wait for a bit. I'm not sure that was the guy… I got attacked, which means, I was probably right but… just in case."

"Maybe you're right." Sam nodded and picked up the gun, knocking out the empty shells and reloading with fresh ones.

"Were you aiming for me or the ghost, Sammy?"

"The ghost."

"You cut it close."

"It was right on top of you."

"I don't trust your aim." Dean took the extra shells when Sam handed them over to reload his own gun.

"You didn't have much of a choice. I could have just let it beat you over the top of your head with a grave marker but I came out here to work, not have fun."

"You're a funny guy, Sammy."

Shrugging, Sam found his phone and dialed. "Hey Bobby. We got it. Pass on word to the Sparks, will you?" He shook his head. "Well, tell Lillian when she emerges for air, that next time I tell her to go, she should go."

* * *

TBC


	11. Chapter 10

Part 10 – Three months later…

(October 9, 2007)

Liz shook her head at her companions. Max, Isabel and Sam were having a heated argument about some obscure points of law. Law backgrounds made for elongated discussions.

"Wow. Could there be anything more boring?" Dean groaned.

"They're competitive. I never play monopoly with them anymore." Liz leaned back so he could hear her over the music and arguing. "My husband swears he's a passive player but they're both cutthroat."

"If you're gonna play. Play to win." He pulled a deck of cards out. "You play?"

"I'm warning you. I learned from the best."

"I'll heed your warning this time. Gary, Stan, Mary." Dean called over. "Want to make it interesting?"

"Texas Hold 'Em." Kyle plopped himself down at the table. "It's the surest way to ensure fair dealing."

"I agree." Michael sat down.

"What's Texas Hold 'Em?" Maria sat next to Liz.

"You get two cards. Then the table shares the Flop, the River and the Turn. That's seven cards but you can only play five." Liz explained while Dean shuffled. "It's poker, so all the winning hands are the same. You have to ante before you can look at your cards. Then you bluff your way through. Bid before the Flop. Keep your poker face through the River and the Turn, bids in between. Best hand wins. You can fold, you can call and you can raise. You can check if you want but I don't recommend it."

"If you hadn't warned me beforehand, that little instructional speech would have tipped me off." Dean commented as he dealt them each a hand.

"I used to sit in on my dad's poker night sometimes."

"Sometimes?" Kyle snorted. "Right."

"I'm demanding rotating dealers." Liz narrowed her eyes at Dean. "It's not that I don't trust you but you are a pool shark. I don't know you aren't a card sharp, too."

Dean shrugged and grinned. "Can't say I blame you for being cautious. I do have a reputation that I work hard at maintaining."

Sam ignored the game going on behind him. 'Nathan' and 'Amanda' were arguing over how their father had won a particular case. "Can I ask what the hell you all are doing out here, in the middle of nowhere, if you came from a family of lawyers?"

"Your father was a Marine and a mechanic if I have my facts straight. What are you doing out here? Driving from town to town, supposedly working as bible salesmen? A person might think you're on the run." Isabel countered quickly. The questions hung in the air for a few long moments.

"Alright then. Truce." Sam held his hand out. Hesitantly, Max took it.

"Truce." Max nodded. "So. What's that they have going over there?"

"Table's full!" Michael called over. "No cutting in, now."

"Come on. I'll take his money, too." Dean smiled broadly at the ladies. "Why not?"

"Lil is good but Nat is better. You don't want him in on this game." Kyle explained.

"Come on." Max scooted his chair in behind Liz.

"Not tonight, Nathan." Liz pecked his lips as she folded her cards down so he couldn't see them.

"Am I playing this right?" Maria complained as she anted for the cards.

"We're not playing yet, Marie. We ante. We check out our cards, then we bet." Dean explained calmly. "Keep up or I'll let Nathan have your cards."

"What am I doing playing cards when I could be getting laid?" Kyle griped as he followed the ante and then the call.

"At least you're playing cards and have gotten some recently. I think my virginity grew back." Isabel commented as she studied the cards she could see.

Liz nudged her husband, who had pretended not to hear a thing. She nudged him again. They shared a look. Max sighed. "I'm gonna regret this but… Amanda."

"What's up? Your wife have a killer hand?" Isabel called over as she examined Michael and Kyle's hands up close.

"Gary and I were going to swing that way in the not so distant future. You want to come?" His eyes flicked to hers but only for a second.

"What way?" She sat up. "Massachusetts? From here? Why?"

"We're going. Do you want to come and pay him a visit?" Max groaned when Michael started glaring daggers at him.

"Why? Why now?" She straightened, a towering force over the poker table.

"Fine. No shore leave for you, soldier." Max got up and took Liz's drink to refill.

"Wait. I didn't say I didn't want to go." Isabel stood startled but followed him into the kitchen. "Do you mean it?"

"For a visit. I'm not entirely sure it's safe enough for you to stay there but we'll be around to make sure no one makes any calls to anyone if you want to see him."

"Is she twisting your arm?"

"No, but she would have if I didn't offer. It's been a while. Maybe it's been long enough."

--

"I totally kicked her ass." Dean boasted as he tucked away his winnings.

"Good. She embarrassed you at pool." Sam nodded as he ran his blurry eyes over a bunch of flagged articles. He wasn't planning on finding a hunt this late in the night but it might keep his brother from boasting too loudly until he passed out. His phone rang and he picked up after a bit of fumbling. "Hello?" He sat up and glanced at the time. "How long?" He put off Dean's interested look. "We'll be there."

"Sam?"

"You drive. We have to get to New England by week's end."

"Who was that?"

"A friend of a friend. Interesting serial murder that somehow is not making the papers." Sam picked up the laptop and turned it on even as he was gathering his things.

"What kind of case?""She didn't have a clear picture but she knows something bad is going on and the cops can't handle it."

"She?" Dean made a face at his brother. "She? Just some she. I don't get a last name."

"Just get in the car." Sam made a face at his brother. "We don't have time to gossip."

--

Max slid into bed next to his wife. She just smiled at him and made herself comfortable. "Who'd you call?"

"No one. Just Sam. Forgot to give him a message." She shook her head. "They're leaving soon. Glad I caught him to pass it along."

"Oh, okay." Max accepted her answer but still, he felt she was holding back.

* * *

TBC 


	12. Chapter 11

Part 11 – Later that year…

(November 20, 2007)

Sam was taking a shower and Dean was bored. He eyed the laptop for a minute before booting it up and opening all the regular search engines they used. Dean tapped the keys lightly as his eyes flicked over the screen. He couldn't find a Lillian Sparks anywhere. He tried Nathan and Nathaniel Sparks but still came up empty. How they managed to cover tracks that well was beyond him unless… Lillian and Nathan were not really Sparks. Age search, marriage licenses. Nothing came up. Nothing even close.

Closing the searches, he moved on to the subjects at hand. It was a standard ghost hunt but he needed locations. Gravesites for twenty men and women whose remains had been removed from a fire and later buried in family plots all over the metropolitan area. He hated big cities. No sense of community. Nothing easily done when it came to mass hauntings and salting the graves of the perpetrators.

"Hey Dean!"

"Yeah?"

"Dean!"

"Yeah!" Dean looked to the bathroom door but Sam was not coming out.

"Dean!"

Leaping out of his seat, he threw his weight against the door and burst in to find Sam clutching at the shower door to stay on his feet as a vision rocked his brain. Dean hauled Sam fully out of the shower and held onto him as the pain came and went. "Sam? Sam? You okay? Sammy?"

At long last, he stilled and took a deep breath. "It's Sam… and we can't stay here. We have to get to… Archer Orchards."

"Where's that?"

"Don't know." Sam shook his head slowly; waiting to make sure the pain wouldn't be back any time soon.

"You okay now?"

"Yeah." He nodded slowly.

"Good." Dean whipped a towel off the rack and tossed it over his brother's naked body. "Get dressed." He set about getting a clue about Archer Orchards while Sam pulled himself together. "So, another one of your freaky psychic friends gone psycho?"

"Maybe." Sam emerged finally, dressed and in search of his shoes and a bottle of pain reliever. "It was the sign for the orchard. A girl. Blonde. Impaled with a sapling. I couldn't see who was there but…"

"Cause you dreamed it, it's one of your freaky psychic friends gone psycho… again." Dean waved him off. "We'll run through here later and salt those graves. Getting around the city takes more planning. We'll have to call in a few bomb threats to keep people out of that building."

"Or ask the mayor…"

"To lock down the first, third and fourth floors of his town hall? Right. I'll get right on that after I reinstate myself as a living citizen of this our fine paranoid country."

--

Max sat on the edge of the bed, towel drying his hair until Liz emerged from the shower. He watched her comb out her hair, put on moisturizer, and brush her teeth. He waited but she didn't seem to notice. "When are you going to tell me, Liz?"

"Tell you what?" She mouthed out while applying Chap Stick.

"Marty said you passed out again. But you haven't told anyone what you saw." He waited but she didn't turn around. It was the hesitation in her response that confirmed his fears.

Her eyes flicked to his in the reflection then back down to her bathroom supplies. "Who says I saw anything?"

"Are you sick?"

She sighed heavily. "No."

"Then what did you see?" He waited but she just stood there. "You want me to tell you the truth, implying that I'm a liar or that I keep secrets but you don't tell me the truth… You're the one who said we had to stop playing at house and live a real marriage… I can't do it alone."

"Is that what you feel? That you're doing this alone?" She turned slowly, her eyes wide.

"It's not the first time you've had a vision and not told anyone. I know that you want a semi-normal existence and that it involves hiding what we are but we shouldn't hide from each other."

"Max…" She crossed to sit next to him. "They aren't like my other visions."

"How?"

"It hits me hard. I pass out. When I come to, that's when I see it." She took a breath. "I don't fully understand it and it's kind of hard to explain… I have some theories but I don't know if that's the right way to say it. Because what I see is so intense. I need some time to process it and fully accept what it is I saw."

"That's not how they usually happen?"

"No. I might freeze for a moment but it's there and I see it. No pain. And I know what it means usually." She slipped her hands into his. "And I tell you. They are things that you have to do. We have to do."

"And the other ones? The intense ones?"

"The first one was Sam and Dean when they killed that thing that took Pete's daughter. The one after that was just so very impressionistic. I don't always understand. There's something Evil. Usually there's a pair of eyes. Calculating. Hunting. The good guy but there's a shadow over him. I don't always see how Evil is killed. I don't always see what the Evil is… there's nothing for me to do but wait and see if it gets clearer."

"You keep saying Evil. What does that mean?"

"I don't know. Just Evil. Something we've never seen before. Something that we can't go after ourselves."

"If you can't do anything about it… why are you seeing it?"

"I don't know, Max." She lied. She hated to lie but lying was easier than saying that something big was going to happen but she didn't know exactly what.

"When I had to go do that thing… the crowbars made out of… what was that about?"

"Something I saw. I don't know why but I know it will help… somewhere down the road."

"Are you happy here?" He turned to her, to watch her expression, to see if she would lie to him anymore.

"Yes. I like it. We have our own space without worrying about thin walls. There's two blocks between us and interruptions. Look. We decorated our space. It looks like we live here and don't just exist in the space. It feels like a home." She scooted into his arms. "I don't want to leave Valor Springs."

Max felt his throat go dry. He could feel her fear. A fear she hadn't yet named. "Is something bad going to happen if we leave?"

"I don't know. I just… we have a good thing going here. We have friends, Max. Actual friends with people we didn't grow up with, who don't know the truth but friends." She took a breath and leaned her forehead against his. "Bobby and Marty trust us. We kind of trust them, you know? It's… this town. The secrets this town keeps. We've become one of them. I have no doubt that if the FBI did come with pictures of us and guns… Bobby and Marty and all their friends would point a gun back and tell us in time to run."

"You feel that?"

"I feel it. Some place in my mind knows it. This is where we need to be."

"Okay. If you're happy, we'll stick it out but we still need to be careful. I trust Marty and Bobby to a degree but I can't trust anyone as much as I trust you and our family."

"I know."

A few days later…

(November 23, 2007)

"Cookies!" Kyle exclaimed when he saw them in the corner of the box Liz had brought for his lunch."

"There's a Salisbury steak and garlic potatoes in there, too." Liz commented as she hopped up on the hood of a nearby car.

"Yes, but cookies. Aw…" He drooled as he bit into one. "Homemade cookies. Where'd they come from?"

"I baked them. It feels good to be at that place where doing these things doesn't feel like a chore." She managed a self-satisfied smile as she thought about how much fun she'd had baking while Max was out looking for a second job to save a little extra cash in case a spontaneous road trip was needed.

"How is the honeymoon suite working out?" He watched her slide back into her own head. He was trying to keep things light-hearted but he could tell she was carrying around a weight of late.

"I think after the first year, honeymoon stuff is over."

"Right. It's your first home… or hovel. Whichever. I think the honeymoon stuff starts over… especially with you guys."

She screwed up her face, bit her lip and almost didn't say it but she had to. "He found out about me passing out the other day."

"I didn't say a word."

"Marty told him."

"Dammit. We missed someone." Kyle snapped his fingers then began wolfing down his homemade meal. "Am I gonna be getting more and more homemade stuff from now on?"

"Probably. I don't cook for sluts though. No seducing the ladies through my cooking." She made a face at him but appreciated his attempt to cheer her up.

"Yes, the ladies. They are ever so kind to a student of Winchester lines."

"Oh come on." She rolled her eyes. She'd heard her share of those lines. They were all cheesy and she couldn't believe any self-respecting woman fell for them… then again, maybe that's why sometimes they worked.

"I'm telling you. If you can pull off the sincere eyes and not laugh when you deliver, they eat it up."

"Hey, Stan." Liz cleared her throat. "Did you do what I asked?"

"Sneak some depleted uranium, melt it down into pellets and drive out to Rutherford and stick it inside a locker and mail the key to some mailbox drop we've never used before? Yeah." He looked up and wiped some gravy from his face. "Did that cover it?"

"Yeah." She nodded stiffly.

"Do I get to know why or is this just another secret we keep from your man and hope to god he doesn't find out?"

"I'm not sure what it's about yet, Stan. I'm still working it out."

"Why are you so secretive about this, Lillian? Is the world ending again?"

"Not the whole world, no. I just… I don't have all the details yet but as soon as I do… right now it's just useless to worry everyone when I don't even know what's going on. If Gary gets wind… he'll be on me until I do and who knows how long that will be."

"As long as we don't have to pretend to sleep together again. I seriously thought he was going to kill me after that stunt… especially when you-know-what happened? No witnesses, a thousand places to hide the body. I feared for my life, and even now with the pebble tossing that is my newest asset."

"Do you trust me?"

"With the future vision stuff? Sure. So long as you let me know before I'm about to die so I can make sure my karma is balanced." Kyle munched for a bit, while Liz hummed something totally out of character for her. "What in the hell are you singing?"

"No clue. I think Marty's jukebox is melting my brain."

--

Sam slid the key into the slot and turned it quickly, peering over his shoulder as he reached in for a few envelopes hiding inside. He quickly locked it back up and jogged out to the Impala where Dean was drumming on the steering wheel and shouting out the lyrics to a BTO song. "You ain't seen nothing yet… B-b-b-b-b-baby!"

"Randy! Your band hates you!" Sam shouted over the music, eyes on the contents of the mailbox drop.

"Robbie was just jealous cause Randy had all the fame and the dames." Dean grinned broadly, obviously implying that he was the 'Randy' of the two brothers.

"We are the only two people in the world who know who Randy and Robbie are… I really don't think that makes us privileged individuals." Sam groaned as the music really started to grate on his nerves.

"Philistine!"

"You know what a Philistine is?" Sam stared at his brother.

"Hey. I'm also fluent in Latin. I know my bible, too." Dean shouted over the music. "What'd we get?"

"Um…" Sam turned down the music before flipping through the three envelopes in his hand.

Dean turned it back up. Sam turned it back down. "Come on. It's supposed to be loud."

"You're old. You need it that loud. I still have some hearing left." Sam ignored the finger when Dean threw it. "We have… a message from someone named Iona that there's spirit activity in a house down the street from her. Dad helped her out a few years back… Geez. We're going to have to break the news, aren't we."

"Looks like." Dean nodded but didn't attempt to raise the volume again. "We'll need to restock on rock salt before we go… to…"

"Davidson, Virginia." Sam set the envelope on the dashboard. "There's… a… receipt of cancellation for Dad's cell… because we haven't paid on it, I guess, or the card he put it on came up as stolen."

Cancellation. The man was dead. Not cancelled. Dean's good mood faded just a bit. "Anything else, Sam?"

"A key?" He held it out. "No note. No return address but it's…"

"To another mailbox." Dean took it and examined it. "It doesn't say where?"

"No. Dad might've known probably."

"Maybe. We'll hold onto it." Dean slipped it into his wallet. "Where's the postmark from?"

"Huh… Rutherford."

"Why 'huh'?" Dean looked to his brother.

"It's where Bobby would run for the expensive parts we needed for the Impala." Sam frowned at the envelope. "But Bobby would have called us or sent a note."

"We'll call him on the way to restock. Maybe he'll know something."

* * *

TBC


	13. Chapter 12

Part 12 – Some months later… Spring 2008

(April 8, 2008)

Dean stepped inside and glanced around the "guest house" where he had spent a summer while Dad had fought and hunted. It had been barely livable back then. Now it had yellow curtains and doilies and felt very much like someone's home. Very Nathan and Lillian. A wall was occupied solely by one picture, hand drawn, of Lillian and Nathan in ill-fitting wedding attire. It reminded him of the picture Sammy used to have of Mom and Dad before he'd lost it in Jess's fire. Dad loved Mom and from that picture, Dean had always known she loved him back.

"Sorry," Nathan rubbed a towel over his hair, a second towel wrapped around his hips. "I couldn't hear you knocking back there." He glanced around, trying to remember where it had been put. "I'd forgotten about it. Bobby took off weeks ago but…" He reached to open a drawer next to the door and rifled through it a moment. "Anyway. You're lucky I heard you at all."

"I remember that as a crap shower." Dean pointed to the standing room only bathroom in the back of the small building. Anything to take his eyes off the nearly-naked man in front of him. "Get a better spray from a drizzle."

"It was but…" Max almost told Dean the truth. He had gotten to know the guy way too well. "I had to make it more accommodating for my wife."

"Right." Dean nodded and took the notebook when it was handed over. "Thanks for this. Bobby never takes off like that."

"He said it was important and you'd be by for that… but you know Bobby, man of few words. Lillian's the one that talked to him. I don't know for sure if there was more to the message."

"He didn't say when he'd be back?"

"No. Left in a hurry…" Max debated for a moment. Who knew what was going on with Bobby and all the whispering between him and Marty before the man took off. "With a box of books and a trunk of guns… but I don't think he's out hunting deer. Is he in some kind of trouble?"

"Nah… Bobby is a student of war philosophy but he doesn't really practice it since leaving the Marines."

"Weekend warrior type."

"Right. Thanks again. I'll let you get back to whatever."

--

Liz handed Sam the takeout boxes of food. "You're not going to stick around? Just food to go?"

"We only really stopped to talk to Bobby but he wasn't there. I said I'd get food. Dean was gonna look for something. If Marty was around… I'd ask him but…"

"Marty made a run to Rutherford. Bobby locked the house up tight." Liz paused a minute. She could let it go and let Dean go around to the cottage or she could just tell Sam the truth since he was standing right in front of her. "I wrote it all down. What you need."

"What's that?" Sam stopped his arrangement of items in his hands.

"Bobby just took off but I knew you'd need to get in there. I left a note on the door for whoever to go around to our house. There's a notebook with incantations and descriptions… a recipe or two. Everything I could see you needed." She whispered, glancing around to make sure no one overheard her hurried instructions.

"Seriously?" He blinked at her. "A… vision? Another one, I mean?"

"Yeah." Liz winced a little. She felt guilty. She should have called Sam or asked Bobby to leave the stuff but she wasn't sure how to broach something so complicated.

"You and me, seriously. We need to compare notes but not right now. We don't have a lot of time." Sam grabbed his boxes and his bag. "You have my number. I'll be waiting for you to call."

--

Liz wiped down the bar one last time and sat to relax while Max cleaned up his mess behind it. She must have drifted off because the next thing she knew, she was on the floor of the bar with several concerned faces staring at her. "What?"

"Are you okay?" Max touched her face lightly. "We've been trying to wake you up for twenty minutes."

"What? I just closed my eyes for a second. Did I fall?"

"Yeah. I only barely caught you." He whispered. "Are you hurt?"

"No, I don't think so." Liz sat up and glanced up at Marty who just stared at her as if she had a second head. "I'm okay. Really."

"You've been doing that a lot lately. Maybe you kids ought to hop on over to Baxter and get the doc to look you over." Marty clapped Max on the back before leaving them alone.

"Li… I… you scared me. Is there something wrong?" Max peered into her face.

"I didn't have a vision if that's what you're asking. I don't know what happened."

"Okay. Let's go home."

Liz let him help her up and practically carry her down to the small cottage they shared. Their friends didn't follow but she knew that Maria would be all over her the next day trying to figure out what was wrong. She sat on the bed and watched Max move around getting doors locked and windows shut. He got her a glass of water and sat at the table they used for meals. He ran his hands over his face. "You scared me, Liz."

"I don't even understand what happened." That felt like a lie as suddenly her vision was filled with images. Pain burst behind her eyes. "He's killed again."

"Liz?" Max watched her eyes flick back and forth as if reading a book that he couldn't see.

"He'll be gone by the time you get there. Why is he killing them?" Liz followed the vision through, scene by scene. "He'll kill again and again. How is he picking them? They don't have anything to do with us."

"Who?"

"Him." She shut her eyes and the glass fell from her hand as her body wilted against the bed. Max shot up to keep her from falling to the floor altogether.

"Liz?" He whispered into her ear. "Liz?"

"Hm?" Her eyes opened just a crack. "What? I just closed my eyes for a second."

"Liz? What happened?" Fear coursed through his veins. He didn't understand at all. Not a bit of it. After all the months of worrying about what she was seeing and why she wasn't saying, it was making some sort of sense but… There was no real understanding it.

"Nothing happened? Are you ready?" Liz tried to sit up but her eyes would not open.

"Ready for what?" Max brushed her hair back out of her face, his knee in a puddle of water.

"To go home. I'm tired." Liz opened her eyes all the way to see the ceiling of her little home behind the body shop. "How did I get here?"

"We walked home. You fainted at work… and again just now. Do you remember?" He blinked back the moisture. She couldn't have just missed that, could she?

"No. I was sitting down, waiting for you to finish up. I just closed my eyes for a second." She squeezed her eyes shut. "My head hurts."

"Okay. It's okay. Maybe you're coming down with something. Marty says there's a doctor in Baxter. I'll trust whoever Marty trusts."

"Okay." She nodded and let Max look her over. Her brain was foggy but she just couldn't remember what had happened.

* * *

TBC


	14. Chapter 13

Part 13 – Later that week…

(April 11, 2008)

Liz put her own clothes back on. She hated the paper gowns that hospitals made patients wear. The doctor had been nice. Apparently there was big business in keeping a big business looking like a small business. The hospital looked more like a clinic but all the instruments and equipment had been relatively up to date. Max had hovered outside the room the entire time. She could feel him bouncing off the walls. Marty had been a topic Dr. Meyer liked. Apparently she knew a bit of went on in that town.

Dr. Meyer had insisted on a head CT when she heard about the episodes of late. When she had asked several other questions, she had ordered a pregnancy test with it all. Liz had almost refused the blood work until a quick conference with Max had confirmed he was too scared to risk not having it done.

Taking her seat next to Max in Dr. Meyer's office, they waited. She itched to tell Max about the pregnancy test but she didn't want to start a fight or remind him that they hadn't been using any birth control since moving into Bobby's cottage. She was sure he knew but she didn't want it to become an issue again. He took her hand and kissed the back, chafing it between his.

Dr. Meyer walked in with her sienna colored folders. She offered them a smile and sat down. "Well, Mrs. Sparks, you are perfectly healthy."

"That's it?" Max sat up straighter.

"The CT came out clean." She pulled out the film to show them. "You've got a busy brain but that's not unusual. Everybody runs at different rates. The headaches and fainting spells might just be stress."

"I just… pass out and have migraines, then." Liz felt stupid. Stupid for thinking shiny new equipment and nice doctors meant a thorough opinion. It wasn't normal and it wasn't like she could just tell the doctor she'd been having visions. "What about the pregnancy test?"

"I was just getting to that." She pulled a sheet of paper out of the folder. "It came back negative." Max shut his eyes and took a deep breath before looking to see his wife's crestfallen face. He squeezed her hand but she didn't look up. "Have you been trying long?"

"We haven't been trying at all… but we haven't been preventing either." Max quickly filled the doctor in.

"I want a second opinion." Liz blurted out. "I…"

"Mrs. Sparks, there's nothing physically wrong with you. You're young and healthy. I can recommend you to a fertility specialist but the headaches don't seem to be a symptom of anything serious. It could be your diet or vegetation in Valor Springs…"

--

Sam flipped through the paper and clipped out the article when he came to it. He shoved it in his notebook before reaching for the other paper he'd saved. He wanted to chase it down but he knew Dad had never run after anything half-cocked. He had to figure out how to kill the thing before he told Dean about it. There had been another killing. Internal organs had been turned to ash.

Whipping open his laptop, he put in a few search words but he couldn't find anything else in the state. When he widened the search, there were three more over the last few years. He couldn't find anything to connect the men, except that they were all men. Different occupations, different cities. Some married. Some not. Some with kids, some not. Ages all within a few years of each other. He'd have to wait until it surfaced again… and that meant some other man would die.

"Sam… I have got a couple ladies lined up who would like to help us celebrate our latest victory over the forces of evil." Dean banged out a rhythm on the tabletop. "Remind me to thank Bobby when we get back. He made the hunt so much easier than if we would have had to do the reading and research ourselves."

"Yeah. Sure." Sam shook his head. "I'm gonna keep looking for something else to hunt."

"Oh come on, Sam. I have stamina but these two ladies would wear me down. You have to take one." Dean toned it down for a moment. "I know it's been a rough few years, Sam… but you know… you can let loose."

"Your type isn't my type, Dean." Sam shrugged. "Have fun."

Dean nodded to his brother. "Fine."

"That's it? You're not going to fight me anymore?"

"You don't want to party, that's fine. More for me."

--

Liz endured the chattering until her friends went away. Max was waiting but he wasn't going to push her. "Let's take a walk."

Grabbing her jacket, she followed him into the night. They strolled around Bobby's property. The garage, the junk cars. Liz took a seat on a mangled mess of a former car and waited. She watched her husband pace and take deep breaths but he wouldn't go first. "I was hoping that the test would be positive."

"I know." Max lifted his eyes to hers. "It hurt me too. The negative. I don't think this place is home but it might have been nice since we've been here so long."

Relieved to feel he was sharing with her, Liz had to take a step herself. One she had been putting off a while. She knew she couldn't hold it forever as her visions were coming with more rapidity and even her loving husband would notice if she held psychic conferences over the phone. "I told someone a half-truth."

"Sam Winchester?"

"Yeah."

He nodded to that. He had suspected something but he had never been sure what it was. Private jokes and comments. A phone call here and there late at night. "Do I have something to be worried about?"

"No." Liz smiled at her jealous husband. "He's just a friend. A friend with a similar… gift."

"Gift?"

"I see flashes of the future. He sees flashes of present and future but he's got an unreliable form. He doesn't get the whole picture. He gets a piece and he doesn't get emotions like I do. He just sees something and it's hardly ever something he can stop or change." Liz explained what she knew. "We don't have intense conversations behind your back, Max. If I see something that needs to be done, I give him a call. When I need an understanding ear, he's available."

"How long has he known?"

"Since that time when you weren't with me."

"Not aliens?"

"No. Completely human. He's a nice guy. He had a crappy life. I don't know everything about his gift. He doesn't know everything about mine."

"I didn't realize how hard it would be for you to deal with. I just figured you'd talk to Kyle if it did become you know… a burden… if you couldn't talk to me."

"Kyle's gifts aren't my gifts. We just got them the same traumatic way." Liz explained briefly. She stroked his arm when he stood near enough to her. "I can talk to you but… just like you have things you'd rather not talk about, so do I. Sometimes the things I see aren't… things I want to share."

"Why?"

"Sometimes the things I see are hard to explain, Max. I've told you that. They're not always easy to resolve. Sometimes, I don't know what they mean at all."

"It's very hard for me to know that there are things that you can't share with me." He admitted, allowing her hand to find his, his eyes on his toes as he rubbed at a grease spot in the dirt.

"I'm still learning about this gift, Max. My progress isn't always what I want it to be. It's hard to be scientific about something that is not a hard science. It kind of throws me, you know."

He had to smile at that. His wife, the scientist. It did make sense that someone accustomed to the rules of physics and carbon-based thinking would have a hard time wrapping themselves around a world of fluid and ever-changing mysticism for lack of a better word. He had trouble himself. "I guess I could see that."

"It's just weird sometimes. I could perform a move seven times a day but what makes one moment different from the next? Why do I get a vision from touching a table I touch everyday? What is different about it other than the uniqueness of the date and time when I do?" She grimaced. "I can't even control when I have them. I can't manipulate them to learn more. I have to put it together with what I feel." She sank against the seat she'd chosen. Then she froze.

"Liz?" Max watched her eyes flick back and forth. Then she was leaping out of the car and staring at it. "What happened?"

"This car. What kind is it?" She pointed to the mess of mangled metal, missing doors and torn seats.

Max stared at it with her. "Chevy… maybe Impala. No clue what year."

"Oh my god…" Liz hesitantly touched the seat she'd been sitting on prior to her vision. "Oh my god… They were lucky to get out alive." The passenger side of the car was smashed in. She lightly touched the driver's seat and this time was ready for the assault of images as they came in a Sam flavor.

"Who?"

"This is… the original Winchester Impala." She whispered. Dried blood marred the seats, especially the back seat where she'd been sitting. She fought with a bout of nausea. Blackness threatened to take her over. "Their dad must have been sitting in the back seat."

"Why do you say that?" He tried to steady her as she worked to put together the pieces of the visions.

Bile rose in her throat because the blackness was there, waiting. "I recognized Death. John Winchester must have died in that car."

--

Sam sipped his morning coffee and barely glanced up at his brother when he joined him in the café. Dean stole a sip of Sam's coffee before ordering his own when the waitress stopped by with Sam's breakfast. "So, get lucky?"

Dean only grinned and sank low in his seat. "What were you so engrossed in last night? I saw clippings. Where are we going next?"

"I don't have anything real right now. Just maybe something. It's too soon to know for sure."

"No more mysterious friends without names or… oh yeah, tangibility?" Dean made a face but welcomed his coffee when it arrived.

"We got there in time. We got there with the info we needed. Quit beating my head about it."

"These friends you got…" Dean stopped at the incredulous look on his brother's face. "What?"

Sam shook his head. He didn't want to open that can of worms but it was going to happen eventually. "You're always on my ass about keeping in touch with my college friends but you've got friends too. Friends of Dad's, friends you've made since you've been on the road. Why can't I have friends?"

"Your friends don't understand what we do. We can't get attached to people like that." He could see the look on Sam's face. That face that had always preceded a blowout between Sam and Dad. "Look what happened to the friends Dad had."

"Okay. Tell that to your best bud, Nathan, next time we drive through. He'll think you're only hanging out with him because you want to nail his wife."

"Hey! Would you cut it out with that?" Dean growled. He knew he was an ass but he didn't need anyone accusing him of being an ass when he wasn't. "Maybe, initially, I wanted to nail his wife. They're not half bad and they help out in a pinch without asking any questions."

"So… those friends are alright." Sam pressed. "Stan and Gary and Amanda and Mary… aside from the ever so cool Sparks…"

"Look, normally, I wouldn't bother but…" Dean relented finally. "You're right. People need friends. Bobby and Marty aren't going to be around forever. Lillian has that freaky future-scope in her head. It couldn't hurt to play nice."

"Right."

"Your future-scope is cool but people always die in yours." He wanted to take the words back immediately but it was a truth that they had avoided for a while. When Sam had his visions, people were already dying. Sometimes it was nice to get there before the killing started.

"Thanks a lot. I was having a beauty time coping with that on my own."

"Hey, look. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that. If your… freaky psychic shit is related to the Demon… he probably screws with it just enough to freak you out and then what? You drive yourself crazy with guilt and you end up pushing a shopping cart in some city talking to yourself and raving to everyone about the end of days."

"Thank you for that frightening glimpse into the future, Dean." Sam waved off his brother and dug into his breakfast. He was starving but it tasted like dirt.

"Maybe I lay off on ragging on your friends." Dean relented, scowling at the table and not hungry enough to eat when he was so full of his own foot.

"Maybe."

The day after…

(April 12, 2008)

Max took the farthest computer in the library's computer lab and shifted the screen slightly away from everyone else in the room. He ran a search using details from the article Michael had shown him on the shape shifter's victim. Similar articles popped up but he spent many minutes sorting out the ones that matched enough to peak his interest. There were four that he felt were too close to be mistaken. All over the country and he couldn't find any common denominators with the men besides being in their mid-twenties.

Scribbling down the information in a notebook, he knew he'd have to find another way to dig up more at some later date. Trips to out of town libraries were few and far between. They had to keep prepared though. On top of this threat. This Evil as Liz had called it.

* * *

TBC


	15. Chapter 14

Part 14 – Several months later…

(August 6, 2008)

Sam dropped himself into the car. His heart beat so fast that he thought it might leap out of his chest. Dean nearly fell into the driver's seat and took a moment before starting the ignition. He had nearly died again. He could feel Sam's eyes on him but he wasn't in the mood to hear it. "Don't do that."

"You're stupid. So stupid, Dean. How could you do that?" He bit out between his sore teeth and swollen mouth.

"See, there, you went and did it." Dean put the car into gear and started driving. "It was the only way."

"No, it wasn't. There were other ways. It would have taken more time but there were ways." He couldn't believe his ears. Dean was actually rationalizing his own suicidal behavior.

"Yeah, and let the son of a bitch get stronger in the meantime. Right." Dean snorted as he guided them away from the scene of a grisly demon death. "We had to act fast and act strong. He could have killed someone else by the time we had all the proper supplies for that back-up attack you wanted to do."

"You know what. Don't talk to me." Sam shook his head and stared out the window. Tears pooled in his eyes but he didn't let them fall. He had been scared. Scared the way he had been in the hospital both times when the doctors had said it was the end for Dean. He never wanted to feel that scared again but Dean was bent on sacrificing himself for the cause… whatever that meant.

The next day…

(August 7, 2008)

Liz paced the room with a book she'd borrowed off Isabel. Back and forth. Back and forth. When Max's footsteps finally took him around the front building and out of sight, she dove for her purse and ran to the bathroom to finally pee onto the plastic stick. She set it down and went about getting ready, her daydreams invading as she thought of the possibility that she could be pregnant. Max hadn't been trying to get her pregnant but he had stopped preventing conception; in his own words. She didn't know where he still stood on the subject but she knew as soon as the news sunk in, he'd be ecstatic.

She was about to check on the results when a beating at the door distracted her. Maria threw open the door. "Kyle's stuck under a car!"

Liz shot out the door and passed Maria to the garage on the other side of Bobby's house. Several men were trying to lift a car while Bobby fought with the handle on the car lift. Kyle's legs stuck out from one side. The car had stopped just far enough to keep him trapped beneath it. Liz reached out to him when she felt the whisper of something nearby. She would have dismissed it as a breeze if it hadn't been for the fall of events inside the body shop.

She tried to get a sense for whatever it was but it was just out of her realm of consciousness. Still, all the concentrating had built a supply of energy deep inside her body. She could feel it tingling. Maria had gotten down on her hands and knees to talk to Kyle. Liz watched Bobby fight with the handle for just a moment more before she was by his side, pulling the handle down with all her might. Pete was squirting oil on the joint to ease the handle down but nothing was working.

Liz couldn't stop the energy from escaping down her arms and into the control panel where it shut everything down… in the entire garage. All the lights turned off, all machinery shut down. Pete looked around. "Think it's the breaker?"

"Dunno." Bobby hit the power button once. It popped out. When he hit it again, it stayed depressed and lit. He eased down the handle and the car rose, slowly, off Kyle. Kyle scrambled out of there and sat on the floor with Maria, scared out of his mind by his near death. One by one, machines turned back on, ready for their masters. "That was strange."

Pete nodded and glanced nervously around. Leaning in, he hissed in Bobby's ear. "I think your circles need to be refreshed."

"I think you're right." Bobby agreed quietly, then turned to Liz. "You tell Nathan that I'll be laying some pesticides later today. I want the two of you to stay out of that house until I call you in tonight."

"Okay." Liz nodded, drained from the exertion. She stared at Kyle, his heavy breathing… and his tools rising slightly away from his body the way they did when he had been using his powers. "I'm gonna take Stan to his room."

"Yeah. He's got a couple of days off." Bobby shook his head and kept eyeing the shadows in his garage.

Liz gathered Kyle and Maria before ushering them into the motel just down the street. Kyle didn't say a word until he was safely on his bed and out of the coveralls with its tethered tools. "Look at this. I can't stop it."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I felt something… like watching me but it was just the guys in there." He explained in a rush. "Then the car was sliding down. I tried to move but it caught me before the guys could stop it. I got it to stop before it damaged me but I'm not that strong yet. I couldn't push it away. Just make it stop coming down on me. Something…"

"Something was in there." Liz finished for him. "I felt it, too."

"Something? Like what something?" Maria prodded them.

"What do you bet that Bobby and Pete and Marty are going to be crawling all over that garage tonight?" Kyle tossed Liz a look.

"It's a high probability." Liz nodded back. "Something changed in that garage. Do you think… someone died in there?"

"I don't know." Kyle shook his head and sighed. "We got a few impounded cars but I don't know where from. Think they brought something?"

"I don't know. I'm below amateur at this point."

"Hello." Maria cleared her throat. "What are you guys talking about?"

--

"So, what? You're just not going to speak to me ever again?" Dean snapped off the music. The silence was deafening. "It's not the first time we've used me as bait."

"First time since Dad died that you used yourself as bait without letting me know." Sam bit out, rubbing at his sore face.

Dean felt slightly bad about that but he was in the right. That thing needed killing and fast. "You've done the same thing, Sammy. Bloody Mary—"

"It's Sam and we haven't done that since Dad died and for a good reason." The second the car parked in front of the hotel, Sam was out the door and on his feet. Despite traffic, he crossed the road, not caring where he was going. He just had to get away from his idiot brother. "You're just like Dad."

Dean leapt out after him. "What? You're just going to run away again?"

"I can't work with someone who has a death wish." He wanted to stop and talk sense into Dean but right now they were both too hot under the collars to get anything real done. "You're gonna get yourself killed and I'm going to get myself killed trying to save you."

Dean damn near threw the keys at his brother to get him to turn around. "No one asked you to save me! I was doing just fine!"

"Real fine, Dean! That thing was sucking out your soul." Sam whirled on his brother. "If you want to kill yourself… Do it without me."

"So you're just gonna run again. Like you always do." Dean yelled out. "Back to that perfect life of yours, just like you've always wanted."

"Dude, don't even. I've been here. Right here since Dad died, without question. I've been by your side, fighting and watching you drown yourself in whatever excuse you can find. I've been here for you but you would rather be alone. Why don't you just admit it?"

"Okay. Fine. Maybe I do admit it. I want to be alone. I fight better alone. I might need to drop you off at some college so you can pretend to be normal and get someone else killed because you don't know where you belong."

Dean couldn't have hurt Sam more if he had stabbed him in the back. "Take it back."

Jaw set, Dean shook his head. "No. It's the truth."

"Take it back!" Sam screamed, advancing with rage radiating off his body in waves.

"Fuck you!"

Sam let fly a punch at Dean, who managed to step out of range and sweep in to land a blow in his gut. Sam tensed at the last minute, absorbing the blow and grabbing Dean's wrist to force his fist away. Then his legs were kicked out from under him. Dean only had the upper hand for a moment before he too was covered in dust and on the ground. The pair rolled and kicked and swung, a cloud of dust surrounding them. Noses bled, lips split as well as knuckles. Arms, legs, knees, elbows were scraped, clothes torn through… As if they hadn't done enough damage to themselves on this hunt.

Max and Michael pushed through the doors with Marty on their tail. Michael grabbed the first collar that rolled by, Max the other. Sam and Dean were yanked apart still swinging. Marty grabbed them by their chests and looked each in the eye. "You're brothers. Act like it. If your Daddy could see you now…"

"Like he'd give a shit." Sam spat out. "You're just like him!"

"If you hated us so much, why'd the fuck you come back?" Dean spat a mouthful of blood into the dirt at Marty's feet.

"Enough." Marty barked again. "Keep them separated. No drinking for either of them tonight. They both need to cool down before they start a brawl."

"Fine." Dean pushed Max away and headed across the street to the car.

"Fine." Sam shoved Michael away and started walking down the street to the convenience store.

"Keep an eye out for more trouble." Marty ordered Max and Michael. "If they look like they're going to start up again, call me."

Later that day…

Maria just shook her head. "That sounds completely crazy."

"We know that." Kyle nodded as he led the way through the graveyard. The hairs on his arms stood up. "It makes sense though."

"No, it doesn't. It's completely crazy." Maria reiterated.

"It does." Liz nodded to them as she pointed to the freshly dug earth. "See. I knew it."

"What does that mean?" Maria stared down at the ground. It just looked like a pile of dirt to her.

"While we were calming down Kyle…" Liz stared down at the earth mixed with ash. "Pete took a shovel, two gas cans and the big van. I saw him drive this way. He dug up this grave and did something before he covered it back up. Bobby was running around 'laying out pesticides' around the guesthouse and his house and the garage. He's a little kooky but… it was weird for him."

"I've seen him do it before." Kyle agreed. "There is some interesting graffiti in that garage, I'll tell you."

"So… what am I not getting?" Maria asked of them, her arms crossed.

"The spirit we felt. I think this is the guy." He pointed to the grave marker. "I don't know who he is but… I have a feeling he was not a nice guy." Slowly, he reached down to touch it. Images flashed before his eyes. "Whoa."

"What?" Liz's eyes widened.

"He was a nice guy but some not so nice guy put him down there in the first place."

"Do you think Bobby would tell us more?"

"Bobby is not a talker." Kyle pointed out.

"You guys are talking about ghosts and hauntings." Maria started back to the hotel. "I can't be out here when you two are obviously insane."

--

Sam sat at the bar, picking at a plate of something gooey. Marty and Bobby flanked him. He had told them about the last hunt. What the demon was, how it killed, what the research was about and how Sam had planned to get rid of it. Then he told them about how Dean had taken it upon himself to be both bait and hunter.

"I knew your daddy for a long time." Bobby began. "It's exactly the sort of stunt he would've pulled. You're lucky he didn't use you as bait without permission."

"Dad did that?"

"A time or two. Let it get too close once too often. What made me run him off that last time. I don't fight as much as I used to and I keep the books. If I die… who will take my place?" He mused as he sipped at his whiskey. "Not one of you boys. You got too much of your old man in you to sit still."

"I didn't even want this life." Sam lamented.

"But you're still doing it. You're, what? 25 now… more than your own man, now. The ideal time and place to stop would have been when your old man passed." Marty pointed out. He had always thought John Winchester was a good hunter but he was wasting himself away looking for the yellow-eyed Demon that had taken his Mary away.

"But Dean… and the demon."

"You boys ain't never gon kill that demon. It's too old. It knows all the tricks. He's 5,000 steps ahead of you because who knows how many hundred years he's been playing this game."

"We'll kill it." Sam stated firmly.

"Then you ain't gonna live long enough to do my job." Bobby finished his whiskey. "It'll die with me."

Sam stayed quiet as Marty and Bobby recalled stories of hunts past, those they had participated in and those they had heard about from other hunters. Some of those came second and third hand. Sam felt like he had in high school. Stuck with a life he didn't choose. A life he couldn't escape. One he was good at but still an outsider in. He and Dean used to sneak beers while the men reminisced about days gone past. Dad had always known and woken them up extra early with a racket to get on the road again. Sam thought he might give anything to get woken up by the sound of a borrowed alarm clock if his dad would just take the hunt over and let him go back college. Had it only been two years since he'd died?

--

Dean had considered leaving without Sam. He really had… but Sammy's bag was still in the backseat and Dean had no clue if the kid even had his wallet on him. He couldn't leave him stranded and naked… It was a lame excuse but he was sticking to it. He didn't open his eyes when an argument approached him.

"We both felt it, O mighty ruler of the stars." Kyle bit out as he took long strides to keep up with Max's pace.

"It almost killed him." Liz had to jog to keep up with them. "Mary didn't understand. She didn't feel its… malevolence."

"Malevolence?" Max stopped to look at them.

"It wanted me dead." Kyle nodded, his eyes flicking to Isabel's quiet countenance.

"Why?"

"I don't know why… by the time we had a clue, the locals had Ghostbustered the thing. Near as I can tell… maybe he didn't like my coveralls."

Dean opened his eyes a crack and peered out the dirty windows to the quartet in the lot. The tall blonde didn't contribute but she looked upset by the subject matter. She seemed to be listening as closely as Dean was pretending not to.

"A ghost." Max stated to them all. "An actual ghost. Do you know how that sounds?"

"I'm aware and it's more like… a malevolent spirit." Liz breathed out. She knew her husband. He was opening himself up to the idea even if his tone was sure to piss Kyle off. A few more minutes of talking and Max would really start coming around to the idea. "Not like the one… when you… that one time back home. This one freaked us both out."

"I'm a walking magnet, now." Kyle gestured to the empty place where his belt usually resided.

"You're not a magnet. You repel." Liz corrected.

"Whatever. I have my own orbit for small metallic objects because I'm so freaked, I can't come down." His hands shot into his hair. He looked like he had a headache.

"Well, calm down." Max advised, his eyes shifting around to make sure no one was listening. "It's done, right? So we'll let it go and hope it doesn't happen again. We have enough problems without getting supernatural crap on top of it."

"You're right." Isabel opened her mouth finally. "Look. So long as this ghost thing is resolved, there's no need to linger on it. Stan, walk me to work."

"What? Why?"

"Because, I said." Isabel grabbed a belt loop and tugged.

Liz tilted her head at Max. "What?"

Max waited until his sister and Kyle were well out of earshot. "Bobby said he was done clearing the house, or whatever."

"Oh. Good." Liz nodded stiffly, not knowing where he was going with it.

"I was looking for you. I found the test… in the bathroom."

The deep furrow between his eyes said it all. His eyes were soft and open but Liz didn't want to look at it. She sat down on the curb and stared across the nearly empty lot. She felt him sit down beside her but she didn't want to be touched. Tears stung at her eyes but she didn't let them fall. "It's not fair."

"What's not?"

"That she never loved you like I did… that she only spent one night with you and she… It's not fair when I love you so much and I want this so much and…" She turned to look at her husband. "What if it never happens?"

"You said that you knew you were meant to be the mother of my children." Max lightly placed his hand on the back of her head. "If you feel it, then it must be true. Maybe this is just not the right time."

"What if we're not compatible that way?"

Dean closed his eyes and was tempted to roll up his window but that would only alert them to the fact their private pain had a witness.

"We'll just have to increase the possibility… maybe… 50 percent?"

Liz burst out laughing and leaned into her husband. "An increase like that would put me out of commission. Try paying rent on your salary alone."

"I'd be willing to sacrifice." Max kissed her head. "Come on. I think we should clear out of the parking lot before we get involved in a brawl."

Dean opened his eyes and watched Sammy cross the road to the Impala through the side-view mirror. So, he waited. The backdoor opened and Sam rummaged around for something for a while before the weight of the car shifted. Through the rear-view mirror, Dean met his brother's eyes. The kid was just sitting there, staring at him. "What do you want me to say? I went in to do a job and I got it done."

"Just… tell me you don't do this shit on purpose. Tell me that you…" Sam shook his head and looked away. "Tell me that I'm wrong about you having a death wish." He fiddled with his wallet for a moment. "I just spent the last couple of hours listening to Marty and Bobby tell hunting stories and I realized that every other story was about a guy who took on something by himself and got himself killed. Guys who didn't normally hunt alone and went solo, pissed off and sloppy… Guys who took on partners to be safe and got themselves killed because they trusted the wrong people and all for a kill."

"Well, you gotta be a little bit crazy to do the jobs we do, Sammy." Dean nodded to the mirror. He shifted his gaze to the departing Sparks across the lot. "That life you want. I want it but… only if I didn't know that the noise my wife wakes me up about in the middle of the night wasn't going to kill me when I check it out. If I could hear my kid tell me about the monster in his closet and didn't need to arm myself with iron and salt before I check it out. If I could give back all this knowledge I have about the dark of the night, I'd want that life. I can't, in good conscience, say that I would take that life now. Not after the life I've lived. I don't think we can have it both ways. I think we have to choose."

"You think so?"

"Dad was… He was 53. It used to sound old to me, Sammy." Dean could feel the tears welling in his eyes but he didn't let them fall. "I'm almost 30 and this isn't a life where you live to an old age. Bobby and Marty are… weekend warriors. They'll probably be around long after I'm salted ash in a field. He was only 53 years old. He never saw grandkids. He almost had a daughter-in-law. If he knew, I'm sure he would have loved her, too. You know? As much as he could because you know that the Demon was going to take his every waking moment. He would have stayed away to keep you safe."

"Dean—"

"He would have dropped in to make sure you taught the kids to fight the monsters in the closet. Insisted on it. It would have meant more fighting but I think you would have spent sleepless nights guarding their rooms against the monsters… just so you wouldn't have to tell them that the monsters were real." Dean blew out a breath. He knew his little brother was a romantic-idealist. He could picture exactly the way his brother would have lived his life with Jess. "I've had some good times. I've had… passion, I guess. I don't think I've ever had real love, though. I've been taking what I can get because I've accepted that each hunt could be my last, Sam."

"You can't think that way."

"Maybe you knowing you can kill the thing makes you feel safer but me knowing that I can die, makes me more willing to put myself on the line so someone else doesn't have to. Give me that, Sammy. I need to be useful. I need to stick my neck out and duck the blade at the last minute. It's the only thing I have to look forward to. I don't really envision a wife and kids for me. If I live to be 53… I'll feel I've done right by Dad. Just let me have it."

* * *

TBC


	16. Chapter 15

Part 15 – Later that month…

(August 26, 2008)

Dean stared into the display case. "They have food in there."

"It's usually where they keep it." Sam nodded and reached passed his brother to select his dinner.

He couldn't get his hopes up. His entire young adult life he had survived on frozen burritos, over-cooked hot dogs and stale nachos. "Since when does 7-Eleven keep full meals in the refrigerator?"

"Since the working man stopped buying groceries and getting married and having someone to cook for him. This is the food of college land. Lasagna without the baking. Salisbury steak and potatoes that taste just as good as any cafeteria you've ever been to and definitely better than the lunchroom in school." Sam handed Dean a microwaveable meal and pointed to the microwave at the other end of the store. "Bon appétit."

"And it's not going to taste like that shit Mrs. Fortson used to dump on my plate at that little shithole Dad made us go to school?"

"Absolutely not… unless you overcook it." Sam flipped the box over. "But they make these very handy directions. It's Dean-proof."

"Goodbye frozen burritos." Dean shoved his brother out of the way so he could have something that resembled a normal meal for once. "Frozen lasagna, where have you been all my life?"

Sam took their empty boxes and the bottles to the counter to pay. "I've been doing some research on that Ash-Silver-Handprint demon for a while."

"And?" The older Winchester watched his brother. It was going to be interesting. His little brother had a gleam in his eye.

"It's killed a couple of times since that one we investigated. I think I found the MO."

--

Max lowered his voice as he explained to Michael what he'd been researching. "Look at these."

"Birth certificates." Michael flipped through them. "They're all our age. All men."

"And the place of birth is listed as Chavez county." He tapped a page marked with the New Mexico state seal.

"Well, why isn't Chavez county empty of all its '83 births?" He groaned as he absorbed what little details the certificates gave. "What's special about these guys?"

"Because all of these men were given up for adoption and moved away… or ran away as in our case."

"You think this thing is looking for us." Michael cursed under his breath and glanced across the bar where the remainder of their gang was laughing at something Kyle had said. "Is it close?"

"It's been zigzagging all over the middle states… there was maybe one in New York but… the body wasn't found soon enough to confirm the silver handprint. I think it could get closer to us. I think our saving grace has been the lack of paperwork and…"

"Our aliases."

Max pulled out another print out. "I did a search of adoptions. Nothing came up. Then I called down to the records office in Chavez. Since we are well over 18 and I desperately need a kidney transplant from a blood relative, they were very cooperative. I have a list of names. Most of them are dead now but there are a handful left. It's only a matter of time before they all go the same way."

"Max Evans and Michael Guerin… right at the top." He ran a hand through his hair. "Sylvester Donnelly and Jason Ambrose… the only other humans on the list."

"Right." Max glanced at his map and at the addresses he had dug up on the two men. "Do we split up and protect each guy or do we roll the dice on who will die next?"

--

"We have two possible targets… about 300 miles apart. We could split up or hope we got the one he'll go after next." Sam pointed to the towns on opposite sides of the state.

"There are two more names on this list." Dean pointed out.

"I can't find those guys. They might already be dead for all we know. I called these two guys as a collector this morning. They're alive."

"Did you do a search on them?" He jabbed his finger at the two on the list with question marks next to them. "What's up with them? Did you even check them out?"

"Of course I did. After an incident in 2002, it's like they disappeared off the face of the earth." Sam nodded to his brother's face. "They might actually be the first two victims but… no bodies, no handprints."

"Did you do a search on the handprints?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Yes but do you have any idea how popular a term that is? Silver handprints turns up over 50,000 original hits. Some lady wrote a bunch of books about them; silver handprints and fingerprints. Really popular and really fucked up my research. This was the best I could do. This thing is escalating. The deaths are getting closer and closer together. We have to kill it before it takes out the last two. Who knows when we'll find it again if these two eat it before we get there."

--

"He's closing in on us." Max stared out the window. "I can feel it."

"How are we getting away this time? If you tell the wife that you're getting me laid again, they'll all know we're lying and Mary will kill me." Michael pointed out.

"Nothing grand. We go buy some presents or do some errands. Once we're gone, we go." Max stared at Liz, laughing and smiling. Happy in this town. With her life. He felt guilty but he liked seeing her that way. If he killed the shapeshifter, her visions would come to an end. It had to be alien and that was his fault. "She passed out again. We have to act now."

"You should really tell her about that." He hoped he sounded like he disapproved but Michael knew that Liz knowing would severely cramp any chance they had of taking the alien out.

"And make her worry? I like it better when she doesn't remember the visions. When she gets one of those bad ones… she's on the phone constantly and she doesn't sleep, she doesn't eat. When she doesn't remember, she gets over it quicker and it doesn't interfere with her life."

"Do you take it back?" Michael exchanged a look with his oldest friend in the world… and maybe off it. It was their longest standing point of contention, what Max had done that September in '99. "I know what it means that she gets them. It helps us. She'll kill you when she finds out you went off again. You and I both know that. Do you take it back?"

"The visions are her life. She should know. When we get back… I'll tell her." He watched her smiling face. "We should get some of those crowbars to take with us. Do it now, so no one notices until after we leave. I want this guy dead. I'm not asking questions first… because he's obviously not."

"Yes, sir." Michael nodded and made his excuses before he slipped out the back.

Max felt bad. Michael had a point but he wasn't twisting anyone's arm to do the right thing. The alien had to die. It was killing innocent people while looking for the two hybrids. Then Liz bounded over with a broad smile. "Marty says you've been shooting pool behind my back. I want a demonstration."

--

Dean ran his eyes over all the research. Sam was snoring, again. That last broken nose hadn't set well. He wondered why all the men were chosen. What was significant about the birthplace being anywhere in Chavez County, New Mexico. What was significant about 1983 in the desert? All adopted. Not an overwhelming number but more than a few. He ran the names through all the standard searches but nothing significant stood out. Absolutely nothing on the two Sam hadn't found.

Glancing back at his snoring brother, Dean opened up Sam's favorite search engine. FBI's most wanted. One by one, he ran the names… just to be fair. Nothing until he typed in Michael Guerin. The warrant was unspecified beyond tampering with a federal investigation. Michael appeared with hair shorter than Dean would have ever guessed Gary Henderson would ever wear it. A mug shot from '99. Known accomplice was none other than Max Evans, wanted for tampering with a federal investigation and armed robbery. Upon viewing Max Evans, it was found to be none other than Nathan Sparks. Known accomplices were listed as Michael Guerin, Isabel Ramirez, and Elizabeth Parker. There was no picture of Isabel Evans-Ramirez but Dean had a feeling that Amanda Jamison bore an uncanny resemblance. One last name on the list of Max's accomplices: Elizabeth Parker.

"Well, fuck me." He breathed out. Lillian Sparks's face stared back at him from her mug shot from an armed robbery in Utah in '01. She had been charged but released due to a lack of evidence; namely the gun she had allegedly used to hold up the store.

"What are you doing?" Sam stared at his brother.

"Some research."

"Can't sleep again?"

"Just…" Dean turned the laptop for Sam to see what he'd found. "Looks like those last two names on the list are accounted for… and then some."

--

"I love you." Max whispered.

"I love you, too." Liz whispered back. The dark swallowed them up in the dead of the night. Kissing his lips, she snuggled in closer as their heartbeats slowed. "Where did you learn to play like that?"

"Maybe I've always played that well." He only grinned in the dark.

"Uh-huh." She giggled. "Well, I'll get it out of you someday."

"Michael and I are going shopping tomorrow." He hoped he didn't sound like he was hiding something.

"I know. Maria already told me. Help him out." She pleaded. "And help him hide it afterward. She gets excited and has to know what he bought. Kyle said she tore up their room last year."

"I will. We'll get the shopping done and out of the way. You keep Isabel from… you know… getting too upset about Jesse?"

"I'll try but… I think she misses him more since you took her on that trip." It wasn't meant as an accusation but it was hard not to gripe. Liz loved her sister-in-law but seeing her so much more miserable after that trip had been hard to stomach. "Famine hits the hardest after a feast. That's when you feel true hunger… knowing what you're missing."

"Do you really think it's that safe?" Max knew what she was hinting at. He wanted his sister happy but he wanted her safe more.

"Maybe for her. Just her. Jesse has connections."

He frowned. Jesse's connections had faded a bit after all the business in Roswell. "Not enough connections."

"I know."

"I'll be back before you know it." He promised.

"Then… Michael will have to drive. I'm going to give you the best send off ever."

"Promises, promises."

* * *

TBC 


	17. Chapter 16

Part 16 – The next day…

(August 27, 2008)

Michael nodded to the bag on the floor. "Liz was right about it being easier to hide the things in plain sight as crowbars but I'm thinking we find a place that can turn them into knives. We might not get close enough to stab or hit but I throw a mean dart or two."

"Yeah." Max nodded as he slipped a crowbar out of the bag. He wished it would be easier done with his powers but the depleted uranium resisted their powers. The molecules were too dense to manipulate but he wondered if he could push it with his powers.

--

"What do you think?" Dean looked to his baby brother. "This is your hunt. You tell me. Should we go cover these guys or go cover Nate and Gary?"

"They have Lillian. She'd get them out in time." Sam didn't even look up as he studied the map. "I'm not worried about them."

"I'm just thinking, maybe, if this thing is after anyone, it's after them."

"It might just go after the guys that are easier to find first so… really, we go where needed. You did say this was my hunt."

"Okay. We go after the other two, but which one?"

"The thing was last in Rockford, Alabama. I'm thinking the guy in Missouri is the next target."

--

Marty plopped a bag on the counter. "Hey, Lillian. Do me a favor, huh?"

"Sure." Liz popped the pen into her pocket.

"Bobby's been busy. Go take him some lunch."

"Got it."

"It's on the house."

"Got it." Liz smiled and grabbed the bag to make the short trek down the street. She sighed when a warm breeze caressed her face. She missed Max already but he'd be back in a few days. Present shopping always seemed to take Michael a day or two longer than anyone else. Normally she would have suggested he not try so hard but when he didn't try at all, the real fighting came.

Bounding through the body shop door, she looked around for the older man but didn't see him anywhere. "Anybody seen Bobby?"

Kyle stood up from under a hood. He glanced at the other guys. They all exchanged unreadable looks. "He's been holed up in the house for days. He hasn't been coming out here at all."

"And nobody cares?" Liz scoffed at the men when they shrugged.

"Hey, can you make sure he has our checks?" Pete asked then immediately ducked under the hood of the truck he'd been working on at the look on 'Lillian's' face.

"Whatever." Liz ran around to the house and knocked on the door. There was no answer, so she tried the handle. It creaked open. Liz carefully stepped over the salt in the doorway. She had stopped questioning all Bobby's precautions against the spirits. She just made sure she didn't disrupt anything that looked like any type of pattern. "Hello! Bobby?"

"Who's there?" The deep voice came from the back of the house.

"It's Lillian. Marty sent you some lunch."

"Back here!"

Liz picked her way through the house. There were stacks of books everywhere, most of them on the occult. A star-circle design graced the ceiling in what looked like his office. There were some pictures on the desk. She resisted the urge to look them over; to see if Bobby had family or something close to it. Passing through, she found Bobby in a small kitchen where he had every available surface covered with jars and canisters with various colored powders. On the table, he had bottles of liquids. He was systematically wetting his hand and dipping it in a powder then applying it to pieces of paper. He didn't seem happy with the results. "I don't know what Marty put in here but I'm sure he knows what you like."

"More like it's some crap he would eat." Bobby muttered and jerked his head to the counter. "Tell him, I'll pay him later. I'm busy."

"He said it was on the house." She offered lamely.

"Right." He snorted.

"Well, it's what he said."

"I'm not owing that son of a bitch anything for more than a day. He charges interest." Bobby grabbed a towel and wiped his hands off, roughly. "Come on. My wallet's in the office."

Liz followed him back to the room where she'd been fascinated by the ceiling art. On the floor was a strange brownish stain that she feared might be blood. Stepping out from under the circle, she examined the pictures in a way she hoped didn't seem rude. There was one of Marty, much younger, with a woman that Liz had never seen before. One she assumed was Bobby when he was a boy; he had the same scowl on his face. A third caught her eye, a man and two boys sitting on a car. An Impala. The man looked familiar.

"I know it's around here somewhere." Bobby picked up a book and laid it aside, looked under some papers and notebooks. Liz couldn't take her eyes off that picture. She imagined a few years and some stubble around that smile; that man's face was very familiar. The kids were happy enough. A sort of darkness in the younger one's brown eyes. A light and laughter in the green eyes of the older one. "What's that you got there?"

They were just boys but seeing those green eyes with that kind of light in them, she knew she had seen the man before. Liz froze as she picked up the picture on Bobby's desk. She pushed her memory for the one she had tried to block out. She knew those boys. "Is that John Winchester?"

"It sure is… one of the best h--. One of the best, John was. Sammy and Dean right there with him." He watched her. She looked like she was going to be sick. "How did you know that was him?"

"I met him, once. Briefly… a few years ago." Liz whispered. "Before we moved to Valor Springs. I've heard stories but I didn't know that this… was him. That I had met him before."

"John was unforgettable, I guess. Dean got that from him. Sammy's great but he's a good boy. Blends in."

"Not Dean." Liz smiled sadly. "He wants to be remembered by everyone."

"Maybe so. That family could charm the pants off anyone. Make people do stupid things and still claim it wasn't their idea."

Liz started to say more as she crossed to ask something about the picture, but suddenly her vision went black. Bobby rushed to catch her before her head hit the floor. The picture frame clattered to the ground and the glass cracked.

--

Max stared at his phone for a minute before he turned it off. Michael had done the same just a moment before. They had just mailed off Maria's birthday presents and committed themselves to the hunt. Max was scared out of his mind but he had to end at least one dangerous thing. He was still on the FBI's postings for wanted men. There were probably more alien threats but this one was going to end.

--

Sam studied all the information he'd dug up. All coroner reports. All interviews with anyone who would talk to him. All research. "I don't know what we're dealing with."

"Any guess? Something close?" Dean tapped the steering wheel but he was discomfited by his brother's confusion.

"I have Bobby doing some tests but he says it's definitely not sulfur. Whatever this thing is, it's not acting like a spirit. It's not acting like any demon we've ever heard of. I'm… coming up empty on ways to kill it when we do find it."

"Is it something old?"

"Bobby and Marty have the circuits burning but no one has heard of anything that could do this. Nothing in history."

"So, it's new?" Dean didn't like the sound of that. Old things had rules. New things were unpredictable but it didn't mean that it was wholly new. That Woman in White hadn't played by the rules but it had been killed. There were still rules. "We just have to figure it out."

"Okay. It's not linked to an object. It's doing its search like we are, probably. Orphaned men born in 1983 from Chavez County, New Mexico. It started with the ones in New Mexico. Then it kind of zigzagged… alphabetically." Sam went over the names and dates of the murders. "When it finds them, it probably studies them. The bodies are always found with the handprint on the chest. It kills face to face. Initial coroner reports have the handprint but it fades after a few days. I'd say demon but there's no chemical residue. No sulfur."

"It skipped these four why? Guerin and Evans are living under assumed names but we only know that cause we met the guys. The other guys?"

"They move around quite a bit. Speeding ticket on this one was how I got his address. The other one was arrested for drunken and disorderly conduct."

"Even if it really wants Nate and Gary, it would have to find them first. It's impatient but meticulous. It is going to kill every single one of these guys until it gets what it wants but what does it want?" Dean racked his brain for everything he could think of. "We know that something is up with them. FBI's most wanted. Lillian has visions. Nate saw a ghost once."

"How do you know that?"

"I was eavesdropping." Dean waved off his brother. "Maybe it's unfinished business with a demon. Maybe it's old. Fucking old like with our demon."

* * *

TBC 


	18. Chapter 17

Part 17 – Later that night…

Liz sat still as stone on her empty bed for hours. Max's cell phone was off. So was Michael's. She picked up a pen and paper and started writing as much as she could. Nothing was clear, there was so much going on. So much that might happen. Then she was frantically dialing their numbers again, pleading silently for them to pick up.

Kyle had left her when she said she was fine. She kept getting glimpses of it but she couldn't see it all. Her head pounded but she refused to sleep. She told herself that Max had not lied about why he was leaving. He just had his phone off so he could sleep. He was just really tired but when he turned it back on, he'd check in. Dialing again, she waited for the beep. "Nathan… it's Lillian. I need you to call home. It's important. I need you to call me. I'm worried. Something isn't right. I passed out again. I need to talk to you. Please, call me back."

--

Kyle looked to Maria. "She's in bad shape. I don't know what she saw but it freaked her out. Bobby said they were talking and she just… collapsed. That's a vision right? That's how she's been having them lately?"

"She hasn't said anything to me. She hasn't had a vision in a while." Maria shook her head.

"She hasn't?"

"No. Her loving husband is always on her ass about them and he's been really laid back and comfortable, lately. So yeah, I figure she hasn't had many."

"That doesn't mean that she didn't have one today. High and Mighty went shopping with the Big Hair."

"Maybe she's really just pregnant, this time." Isabel offered but she didn't know if it was wise to broach that subject with Liz right now. "I'm worried about her, though. She called in sick. Marty gave me a look like maybe he thinks something's wrong. Whatever it is… I think we all know that it's not going to be good news."

"Give her the day. We check in on her but we don't bug her. She'll come to us when she's ready." Maria held out her hands. "And yeah, I'm worried, too."

"Maybe she just had a fight with the Astounding Natharini and she just needs space. It happens, right? Five year itch, maybe?" Kyle offered with a lame joke.

"Amanda! Get busy. We're short-handed today." Marty called from the back. "Mary! Run her over some soup or something, yeah?"

--

Liz scribbled image after image, writing her feelings about them in the margins. Arrows and dashes accompanied each image, like a comic strip. She kept coming back to the same events with different outcomes. She found a lot of things confusing. She labeled stick figures as the faces were brought to mind but nothing was finite. Nothing was clear. She ransacked her husband's things. His nightstand, his drawers. Nothing.

Picking up the phone, she dialed rapidly and was directly taken to his voicemail. "Max. Call me. It's important. Whatever you're doing. Don't. Please just come home."

--

Max watched the guy examine the crowbars. Michael had picked the guy out of a phone book in a seedy city they had originally planned just to drive through. "Well, can you do it?"

"What is this stuff again?"

"Depleted uranium. Very strong. It's been melted once into these."

"Can you pay?" Michael flashed the guy a wad of cash. The guy nodded to himself. "Then I can do it. Knives you said?"

"Like for throwing." Michael clarified.

"Can I be creative?" The guy grinned.

"Whatever. Just don't mix the metal. It's very important that the knives are pure depleted uranium."

"You probably don't have time for smelting but I'll do my best."

--

Dean shelled peanuts, tossing the shells to the ground. He popped the nut into his mouth and groaned. "Oh, come on, Sammy. Nobody is going to kill this guy. He's boring."

"Boring is not always unkillable. You bore me to death but I'm willing to bet there are hundreds of people who want you dead." Sam scanned his notes for anything of interest. Finding more common threads was extremely difficult. He was momentarily knocked off balance when Dean punched him in the arm. "But… nothing is more annoying than a demon that doesn't have patterns."

"So, all these guys were given up for adoption." Dean was tired of running in the same circles. "How many were actually adopted?"

"Little over half. The others grew up in foster homes and moved away of their own volition."

"Our friends Nate and Gary?"

"One of each. Nate was adopted by a couple, along with Amanda. Gary was bounced around before he settled with one family for a while. Emancipated minor at 16. He was picked up for murder more than once. No convictions."

"Murder? Gary?"

"It's what his, Michael Guerin's, rap sheet says. Nate just has the one armed robbery… but he didn't steal anything. It could be some trumped up charge to get him on the list. He really doesn't strike me as the type to rob convenience stores."

"Why not?"

"He tends bar and doesn't drink; minimum wage. If he were some kind of bandit, he'd have more money and he probably wouldn't work for Marty. I mean… come on." Sam gestured to the two of them. He personally hadn't done any honest work since he was in college. And Dean hadn't done any in longer. Neither of them was starving.

"Maybe Lillian's the crook. Nate just follows her around. She's smart. She might have a day job to throw off the cops."

"Right… cause Lillian is intimidating. She couldn't scare off a bee."

"Stan says she threw Nate's ex against a wall." He caught the look his brother threw him and shrugged. "It's what Stan said and Lillian didn't deny it."

"Uh-huh. Stan also said that he's waiting for the big alien invasion. I wouldn't listen to everything that guy says."

"Oh, man. Really?" Dean tossed another shell to the ground in annoyance. He scoffed at his boots when he kicked the shells away. "I gave that guy some of my best come-ons and he's a freaking… 'I saw a UFO in my backyard' guy?"

"Well, these guys must have pissed somebody off because the whole crew picked up and ran from something even though not all of them are on the most wanted list. Details on their rapid departure aren't very clear…"

"Where are they from?"

"Roswell, New Mexico."

"No shit?" Dean laughed. "Maybe they're aliens. Stan might be on to something."

--

Liz sat drinking at the end of the bar. Marty kept a close eye on her. It seemed just like every other time 'Nathan' had left but 'Lillian' seemed to think differently. When asked, she stated that she had to figure some things out on her own. None of her friends seemed to be able to get through to her. He had to hand it to her. She only drank two beers over the course of the evening. A strong woman who didn't want to let her guard down too much.

Maria tried but Liz wasn't talking. She kept waving off her friend and rubbing her forehead. Every time AC/DC, Scorpions or something similar came on the jukebox, she got up with some change to change the song to something less dated.

Isabel offered her shoulder but it was refused. Liz did, however, take the mug of soup when it was left in front of her. She only ate half but it was more than she had eaten all day.

Kyle tried to make her laugh but they had been gone too long not to worry. He had seen her making calls and leaving voicemails. It wasn't like Max to turn off his phone or not to check his voicemail. Maybe Liz was right. Maybe something was going to happen.

* * *

TBC 


	19. Chapter 18

Part 18 – The next day…

(August 28, 2008)

Maria lingered after she served Liz the beer she'd asked for. It was early in the day but the worse Liz looked, the worse a feeling Maria got about the whole situation. "Chica… you have to tell us something if you know something."

"I don't know anything." Liz shook her head and fingered the notebook she'd brought in with her.

"You know something."

"I have a feeling, Maria. I don't know anything." She locked eyes with her friend.

"Talk to me. Let me know what you're feeling because you're scaring the shit out of everyone."

Liz wiped a tear from her eye. "He lied to me."

"How?"

"He promised he wouldn't lie about leaving again… but he always does. He did it to me in Roswell."

Maria knew it was serious. It had been an unspoken pact not to discuss Roswell in public since they'd left. Liz had used Maria's given name and spoken the unspeakable in less than two minutes. "What do you mean?"

"I mean… He's always done this. He broke up with me, without giving me a real reason that first time. Just stopped being there for my own good, he said. Then he doesn't believe me when I feel so strongly that I'm right… and I was. I was right. I was right about Alex." She gasped in a breath to keep from crying. "Then he was going to leave me. He was going to leave us all and he didn't even call to tell me. He just was going to leave me to live on this Earth without him. Then that time he changed all our plans and didn't tell me until… I realized I was all alone. I was afraid for those minutes when I didn't know where anyone was and it was because he didn't want to start a panic but I panicked. He did it when Marty's goddaughter was taken and he's doing it again."

"He's a man. The curse of being a man is to constantly repeat all his mistakes." Maria knew it was lame but she didn't know what to do with her distraught friend. "Wouldn't you rather eat ice cream than cry? I know Max loves you but he's being an idiot."

"I don't want ice cream, Maria. I don't want to buy shoes. I don't want to go to Rutherford to watch a movie with hot guys or to a club to dance with hot guys." Liz stared at her best friend. "I know he loves me. That's never been a question. I want my husband here. With me. That's what I want. If you can get him on the phone to tell me why he lied again, then I'll do something else… but until you do, I'm going to sit here with my beer and cry. Okay?"

Maria stared at her miserable friend and felt utterly useless. "Is it… not safe? For the guys to be out of town?"

"I don't know." Liz lamented. "I just… how could he lie and run off like that?"

"What kind of vision did you have?"

"Not a good one but it's too blurry right now. I can't see it." Liz lied. "I can't talk about it until I know what we can do about it… and that's all I know for sure."

--

Max examined the set of throwing stars and throwing knives. He chucked a throwing star at the dartboard on the far end of the room. It flew wide and missed by several inches. On the second throw, he tried to use his powers to adjust for the difference. It worked, but only slightly.

"Don't think Frisbee quite so much. Use the hole in the middle as a guide." The blacksmith took one in his hand and tossed it in a quick flick of his hand. "Your finger guides the star."

Michael picked one up and did the same. He got it close to the bull's eye. "Awesome."

Max picked up a knife and threw it end over end. It hit the mark. "I guess I'll be using these."

"That was good." The blacksmith retrieved the sharp objects from the wall and placed them with their sets. "I threw this in, free of charge." He laid out two short daggers. "I figured you'd be into this. There was enough left over to make them. I love hand to hand, man. Where do you guys perform?"

"All over. We were on the way to a show." Michael lied and gathered everything together. "When we get placed, we'll drop a line."

"Awesome. You guys good?"

"We'd better be." Max paid the man and walked out the door, his gut agitated by something he couldn't name. He kept walking when Michael stopped at the car. He turned into the alley and puked into a trashcan.

Michael was waiting when Max sat in the car finally. "Something wrong?"

"Just… it hit me… we're going to kill someone. I kind of thought we'd never have to kill anyone again." Max breathed out and searched his bag for mints. "I've never thrown a knife in my life and I…"

"Maybe you threw knives in a past life."

"Shut up."

--

Dean flipped through page after virtual page of demon lore on the Internet. There was nothing from any reputable source that said anything about demons that left their victims with bellies full of ash. He kept tabs on the other potential victim via crime logs and news from the area but nothing was popping up.

Glancing over at Sam, he knew his brother was having the same kind of luck. Sam pulled out his cellphone and pulled out their father's journal. Dean shut his eyes. Calling the old guys might help but somehow he doubted anyone had anything on ash demons. Bobby had come up short. There wasn't much hope for the rest of the guys.

He pulled up the list of victims and began examining what he could of their lives. All born within Chavez county, given up for adoption within the county. All lived pretty unremarkable lives in their respective cities. Graduated high school or didn't. Most moved away. There was still nothing clear but his suspicions grew that Nathan Sparks and Gary Henderson were the ones this thing was after.

Dean changed his search. 1983-2002. Roswell, New Mexico. Max Evans. Michael Guerin. Elizabeth Parker. Before he could read anything significant, his phone rang.

--

Liz sniffed as she crossed out images that were missing from the internal reel in her head. There were still a number of variable outcomes but the path had become clearer. Tearing sheets out, tearing squares out, she arranged them as they were in her head. Stick figures were moved and renamed. Liz threw her hands up in frustration. She almost took a shot from the bottle she'd purchased after she'd left the bar. She almost drank herself into a stupor but she didn't like the way the odds were stacking up against her husband. She studied the images and cleared her mind. She moved pieces around. She drew in new opportunities as she saw them. It had to work. It had to. She had to put all the soldiers in the right places. It was like a high-stakes game of Risk and she was the General. She had to win.

Liz walked into Bobby's house. He watched as she sat at his desk and drew a picture. Then she flipped through his phone directory. He had a rotary phone but she diligently dialed all eleven digits.

"Dean, it's Li---Lillian." She licked her lips and took a deep breath. "I need you to stop what you're doing and get to Rutherford, South Dakota. There's a mailbox there… yes, that key was from me… Yes. Then you need to get to Stephenson, Montana… It's Ma—My husband. It's Nathan… I know but I need you to bring him home to me… It has to be you. It's a… it's a really powerful demon… Your usual ammo won't work… No. No. Not silver, not salt, not iron. Maybe fire. Depleted uranium will slow it down… In the mailbox in Rutherford. There are six boxes of pellets… I didn't have shells so you'll have to pack some yourself… It's important and it has to be you and Sam… Please, Dean. Just bring him home to me."

When she hung up the phone, she let a tear slip from her eye. Bobby just watched as she pulled herself back together. "Sorry to just barge in, Bobby. He's going to call back. You describe this to him." She tapped the picture she'd drawn on the desk.

"Why didn't you just tell him this?"

"Because it does him no good until he gets there. He has to find them first. He has to get there and find them first. I don't want the Winchesters going after this thing until after they find my husband. When they call, make sure they're with Nathan and Gary before you hand over the info. It's very important."

--

Sam cursed to himself. He had picked the guy in Missouri. He just seemed like the more likely victim. The easiest to get killed. Dean drove like a demon from the hick town in Missouri to Rutherford, South Dakota. Sam was tempted to call Lillian to get more details but he doubted she could say anything more than she said to Dean earlier. Dean screeched to a halt at a stop sign. Heavy traffic. It was a junction. "We could go get all the details from her now or we could keep going and pick up the damned pellets."

"We go get the pellets." Dean muttered. "She seemed to be in a hurry. Nathan and Gary are demon-hunting amateurs. They're going to get themselves killed. How long until it closes?"

"Three hours. We've got time to get there without worrying that we'll have to break in. How much time until we need to get to them?"

"I don't know. As soon as we get the pellets and get on our way to Stephenson… then we call to see if she knows more." Dean tossed his brother his phone before sending the car roaring into traffic, nearly clipping a truck in the far lane. "Check where she called from, would you?"

* * *

TBC 


	20. Chapter 19

Part 19 – Two days later…

(August 30, 2008)

Maria opened her presents from Max and Michael with a heavy heart. Liz had been right about whatever stupid thing they had gone to do. They would have brought the gifts back in person if it was just a shopping trip like they had said. The cards both wished her a Happy Birthday but neither gave any sort of explanation as to why they had run off. Max had given her a book on the stars. She smiled as she flipped through it. It reminded her of home and her mother. She showed it to Liz, who had managed to remain sober for the last day and a half. The brunette's smile seemed genuine and her tone was even while she spoke. "I'll tell him that you like it."

"I do." Maria nodded. She picked up Michael's gift. A silk scarf in a smoky sort of red and pink. A set of decorative hair combs that gleamed in her fair hair, each one adorned with Chinese prosperity characters. "Wow. He really…"

"Shopped." Liz nodded.

"'To my spirited lady. Have a Happy Birthday. I know I'm not the best at gift-giving but I figure that anything half as beautiful could only make you look more like the angel you've always been to me. Love, Michael." She half-laughed and tried not to look worried when she showed Liz the card. "He actually signed his real name on it."

"They're coming back." Liz squeezed her friend's hands.

"He'd better. I'd like to thank him before I kill him."

--

Isabel sat in the front pew with Kyle beside her. "I never know if I really believe in it. You know… God."

"Why not?"

"It's just… God creates everything, right? Did He plan for someone to revive my soul and put it in a test-tube filled with alien DNA, human DNA and Gandarium? Was that something He did?" She stared at the cross behind the pulpit. "I mean. It's a lot of work for eight beings, you know? Should I be that much more special just because that was such a contrived set of circumstances?"

"Or? I'm sensing an 'or' in there."

"Or… am I really just an abomination in His eyes?"

"Come on, Isabel."

"I went to church every Sunday with my parents. I celebrated the heck out of every Christmas. I was married by His laws… in a ceremony by a priest with a man I loved, waiting to give myself to him until after the wedding. Just the way I was taught in Sunday school. You know? I followed the rules…" She trailed off. "But do the rules apply to someone like me? Not only an alien but someone who regularly broke the commandments even though I considered myself a good person? I took His name in vain. I did not honor my father and mother as I should have. I have killed. I have stolen. I have coveted that which I could not have. Maybe I even bore false witness to save my own skin. How many is that? Six out of ten? Doesn't that guarantee a seat in Hell? Or does the devil not take me either because I am not of this earth?"

"Isabel…"

"Do you know what always bothered me? Max, when he died that time. His body turned to ashes. He died and he burned up. Burned until he was ash. Why? Is it some sort of encoding in our DNA that we fly beneath the radar even in death?" She turned to her friend. "Do not quote that fat bald man to me, Kyle Valenti. Looking at Liz this way, it scares me, Kyle. It makes me think about death and what comes after. It terrifies me to not know where I belong."

"It terrifies everyone." Kyle took her hand in his. "I know how you feel… and don't say that I don't." He cut her off. "I was born human. That was an absolute. My dad begged Max to heal me when I got shot and now… I'm not human and I'm not alien. I'm some hybrid in between that can levitate rocks, sometimes I have telekinetic tendencies and I have a halo of tools on my belt. There is only one person on the planet like me. Maybe Dad is like me too but… there are only three of us… just like there are only three of you left who have this human-alien DNA."

"Okay. I am not alone." Isabel took a deep breath and tried to calm down. "Where is she?"

"She's with Maria. Opening presents from the guys. They didn't leave a trail, though. We'll have to sit and wait. Liz comes unhinged if anyone mentions going after those morons. She's okay today. She looks like she believes they will come back."

"What changed?" Isabel whispered. "What changed that she would do that to us? Make us believe something bad was going to happen and then just… changed her mind that they were going to be okay?"

--

Bodies lay strewn all over the room. Kyle's head lolled against the back of the armchair, Isabel across his lap. Maria had passed out on the floor, leaving Liz alone and cold in her bed. Liz shut her eyes but she couldn't see it anymore. Whatever had happened had passed. It was over but… where were they?

The next day…

(August 31, 2008)

Dean stepped out of the car and then pulled something out of the backseat. He was dirty, sweaty, and weary. He hadn't slept in three days and honestly didn't know if he could walk across the parking lot much less around to Bobby's. Kyle raced across the street to the bar to get the ladies. They all stepped outside in time to see Sam help Michael out of the car. Michael stepped in front of them, his eyes dead. "Something sort of came up. Sorry."

Liz stepped passed him and stood in front of Dean, whose eyes were not laughing. Not at all. In fact, they were welling with tears. "Lillian…"

She resisted the urge to look into the car behind him. "Did you bring him to me?"

"Yeah." He pulled a Maxwell House coffee can out of a burlap sack. "I'm so sorry, Lillian. I tried to get there in time. I'm sorry."

She stared at the can. "No." She shook her head as her shoulders started shaking. "No."

"I am so sorry. We got there as soon as we could. I did everything I could. Sammy did everything he could. We just… we tried so hard."

"You were supposed to get there in time. You were supposed to use the pellets I sent you."

"We did. We tried everything we knew." Dean reached for her when it looked like she was going to fall. She slapped his hand away and yanked the can out of his hands. "The pellets slowed it down but… we couldn't get him out of the thing's reach."

"You put him in a coffee can." She sobbed as she cradled her husband's remains to her body. "What did you do to his body?"

"I didn't." Dean shook his head. "The thing did it, I swear it."

Liz turned her back on him and let the tears fall onto the can. She started to walk away when he gripped her shoulder to turn her back. "Don't touch me!"

"You want these." Dean pulled some other items out of the sack. Max's wedding band and the medallion from his necklace. "I'm sorry. We tried. I tried."

"Just… stay away from me."

Dean fell against the car, tears streaming down his face. Michael's body was supported by Maria and Isabel. Kyle walked with Liz at a distance. Dean watched through blurry eyes as Liz collapsed before the turn, weeping on Kyle's shoulder. Sam leaned next to his brother but didn't say a word. "Sammy? I'm tired."

"Me, too." Sam's voice sounded like rust and iron.

"Did you see her face?" He coughed suddenly and had to fight the rising bile for the millionth time since they had left that field in flames. He coughed so hard, he thought he was going to stop breathing until Sam whacked his back hard enough to get the air going. Then he was dry heaving into the dust. He wept into his brother's denim jacket. "I said I'd bring him back. Why'd I say that?"

"You thought you could."

--

Liz choked on her tears as she ripped page after page from the notebook, electricity shot up and down her arms. Sparking the paper and making holes but not setting the pages on fire, the energy leapt off her body like she was the electrode in the plasma globes in the mall.

"Kyle." Isabel whispered. "Can you?"

Kyle nodded and approached Liz slowly, the arcs of energy reached for him. He absorbed them as he inched closer. It stung but he could see that Liz was hurting far worse than anything he could imagine. He took the notebooks away from her and held her arms away when she tried to hit him. "Sh. Sh. Liz. Sh. We're here for you." Tears slipped down his face as it began to sink in. He'd been numb out there, waiting to see what Liz would do. He still expected Max to rush into the room, breathless, and take Liz into his arms to prove that everything had gone according to plan. That wasn't happening. The coffee can sat on the dining table. The Maxwell House side turned to the wall. "Liz. Sh."

"I tried to warn him." She sobbed. "I tried. As soon as I saw it, I tried to call him. I didn't know it would happen this way. I didn't know. I tried but he wouldn't call me back. I should have warned him sooner."

"It's okay. It's okay. You couldn't have known." Kyle wrapped his arms around her shaking body.

"I could have tried. I didn't try hard enough." Liz sobbed on Kyle, unable to hold her body upright any longer. The energy dying down to a light crackle around her body.

Michael bent and picked up a page that had landed near his feet. He stared at it and stared at it. "What the fuck is this, Liz?"

"What is it?" Isabel frowned at the only brother she had left.

"This is the field." Michael bit out. "This is the fucking field where we caught up with him."

Liz stilled suddenly, eyes wide. Kyle looked her over. He knew that look. She looked guilty. "I drew it from memory. I tried to call…"

"This is dated last month." He pointed to the scribbled date at the top of the page.

Liz began scrambling around gathering the pages before anyone else could look at them. "You don't understand."

Isabel raced around, gathering the pages and comparing the doodles on them and the dates each was drawn. "These are before the guys took off. How long have you known?"

"It's not… I just…" Liz dropped the pages on the floor and trudged across the room to pick up her husband in his coffee can. "I didn't want to worry anyone."

"How do you just not tell me my brother was going to die?" Isabel shrieked, the tears finally arriving.

"I did everything I could. I spent so long analyzing every way with what little I knew." Liz whispered, her eyes on the coffee can in her hands.

"How do you just accept your husband is going to die?"

"I didn't just accept it." Liz snapped her eyes to her sister-in-law. "I tried to prevent it. I stuck us in the middle of nowhere so he couldn't go far. I've had a while to find a way to fight it. I never knew just how or when it was going to happen but I knew something would if I couldn't keep him here. The timing was important. I tried to stop him."

"You couldn't get back-up there sooner?" Michael demanded, weakly. Maria tended to his wounds quietly.

"Not without killing you all." She stood to face all her friends, the can never leaving her arms. "I didn't know details until after you two left and turned off your phones! Michael, I couldn't get you a specific warning. I went over and over it. Too soon and twenty people would die. Too late and two people die. Both ways it got away. It had to be exact. It had to be precise so that it died. So that it was stopped."

"So you sacrificed Max?"

"I sacrificed Max?" Liz turned on Michael, towering over his seated form. "Who dragged him out there? Who convinced him that killing the shapeshifter was the right thing to do? Who turned off the phones?! I told you not to go without telling me!"

"You're blaming me." Michael knew what was his fault but Liz should have warned them if she had known something. "It wasn't just some shapeshifter. It was Kivar in all his alien glory! If we'd had a clue—"

"No, don't put this on me. I didn't tell him to go. I begged him to stay. I didn't kill him, lay my hands on him and burn him from the inside out. I sent Dean and Sam as backup to let you kill it when it was vulnerable. To get you out of there before the Feds showed up to investigate." She dropped her gaze back to the coffee can. "To bring him home… but not like this."

"Liz."

"Shut up! Get out of my house." She turned back to Michael. Everyone stared at her, stunned. "I said get out!"

* * *

TBC 


	21. Chapter 20

Part 20 – Three days later…

(September 3, 2008)

Liz pressed her lips to the can before letting Isabel have it. Things had been cold between everyone since that scene in Liz's cottage days before. Many hard words had been said that day. She had hardly seen anyone at all. She'd had to go to the store for some saltines, the only food she seemed to be able to stomach, but Kyle had only nodded in passing. Maria, Michael and Isabel were standing in front of the van. Their minds made up. When they had finally gotten up the courage to tell Liz their plans, she hadn't argued but she couldn't go with them.

Holding back a sob, Maria embraced her lifelong friend. "I am so sorry things turned out this way, petunia. I love you but… Michael can't stay here and I have to go with him."

"I understand." Liz nodded into her hair. "If he ever pops the question, I expect at least an invitation to the reception."

"Maid of honor, babe. Maid of honor… but hell will have to freeze over first… but if he ever does." Maria stood up. "You should come. Come with us."

"I can't." She met her friends eyes. "You'll understand what I mean someday but… I had the best of Max here. I had the worst of him there."

"Okay. I trust you know what that means." Maria climbed inside the van beside Michael, who had already said his goodbyes to Kyle and had refused to acknowledge Liz.

Isabel stood there, unsure of what to say. "What should… I mean…"

Liz took a deep breath but didn't take the can back. She had refused to change it out for an urn. It seemed fitting that it have his name on it… and he should go home. To be properly buried at home in Roswell. "Tell my parents that I just can't go back without him. Tell your parents that… tell them whatever you want."

"What I said… the other day…" The tall blonde took a shuddering breath.

"I know."

"I'm going to miss you. You're my sister."

"Yeah." Liz nodded, tears filling her eyes again. "Promise me that when you and Jesse have a zillion kids together that they know they have an Aunt Liz somewhere in the boondocks."

"Yeah." Isabel laughed a little then hugged her sister-in-law. "I'm so sorry, Liz."

"I'm sorry that I couldn't do more… before… I never meant to… I thought I had it figured out but… It's done now. It's really done now." They clung to each other for a long moment. "Just make sure the headstone is tasteful. Simple. Loving son, brother, husband and father… because we know he was."

She nodded stiffly. "We'll keep in touch."

"Definitely." Liz stepped aside so Kyle could say his goodbyes to Isabel. She walked around to the drivers' side, where Michael was staring straight ahead. "I'll miss you, Michael." He didn't say anything. "Despite everything I said, it's not your fault. If it's anyone's… it's mine."

He swallowed down a lump and right when Liz thought he was going to flip her off, he turned his head slightly and let his eyes fall on her. "Yeah. Ditto."

"Take care of her or I'll light you up like a Christmas tree." Liz warned, half-joking.

"She might think that's funny."

She felt Kyle's arm around her shoulders and they both watched the van back away and disappear into the dust. She leaned on him like she hadn't since that third or fourth date when she'd become comfortable with him… before beer blasts were commonplace and before her sophomore lab partner had saved her life. Kyle kissed her forehead and guided her back to her cottage. "Do you want me to stay?"

"Yes."

"Okay, but no hanky-panky. I don't know what diseases that husband of yours gave you." He joked, lamely. They trudged in silence for a bit. He wondered if she had even smiled at his bad humor. "You're going to be okay, you know."

"I don't know about that. I didn't feel him go. I should have felt him go… shouldn't I?" Tears slipped silently down her face. "I felt him die the first time."

"Maybe it… reversed the connection thing. Him dying that time. You loved him so much, you still never missed a beat but… maybe it just wasn't there anymore."

"But I still felt it… when he took over Clayton's body."

"Are you sure? When was the last time you were sure that you were connected that way?"

"I don't know… When I was getting visions before graduation for sure."

"From… 'touching' people?"

"Maybe not… maybe when… he died again… Not died but… maybe he did die again when he fell through that gazebo. I don't know… It's too soon to be having this discussion." Liz let Kyle open the door for her. The room was littered with dying arrangements that all their friends in town had sent. "Welcome to the potpourri suite."

"Wow, do you know all these people?" Kyle set his charge in a chair and walked around examining all the flowers.

"Um… I know about half of them." Liz picked up the stack of cards where she'd been writing 'thank you' notes. She flipped through them to examine the names she had written but not known personally. "The butcher, the guys in the shop." She held up eight cards. "Some hunters from the bar." Five more. "The guys down at the gas station." Three. "The guys in Rutherford." Ten more. "I guess more people around here knew Max than I thought."

"Well, you married you a pretty magnetic guy." Kyle commented as he took the seat across from her. "I thought he was uptight when we were in Roswell… and in Darrey and in Putter and in Racine… but here, he was… pretty relaxed unless you had a scary vision or you guys had a fight."

"Yeah, he was." Liz nodded. "I liked him here. I mean, really, really liked him." She laughed. "Of course I loved him but… he was more… him here."

"I guess I know what you mean." He took a deep breath. "I'm going to miss him. I still don't feel like he's gone. You know?"

"It doesn't feel real. I didn't get to say a real goodbye. When he said they were going shopping, I gave him a hell of a goodbye but… I didn't know it was the last one I'd give him." Wiping at her face, Liz searched for the Kleenex. "I haven't really cried because of him in a long time. I think I forgot how. I was always crying over him in high school… and then…"

"You married him and then he stopped making you cry." Kyle handed her a box after popping off the cardboard top.

"Yeah. I want him back. I want him here." She wiped roughly at her nose and eyes. "I'm selfish. He's… better off. You know? In whatever passes for heaven these days. He'll be stress free. He can be whatever it is that you are after you're dead. No Antarian kingdom. No FBI. No fucking aliens."

"Stop being strong for me, Liz. I don't need you to be strong." Kyle stood and pulled her out of her chair. "Stop and grieve." He could feel the waver in his own voice. "Just stop and let it out."

"He was mine and I don't have anything but pictures left." Liz sobbed on the only friend left with her.

--

Dean downed his third shot of the day. Marty and Bobby were drinking with him. The bar was virtually empty. There was no wait staff. No cook. Sam was somewhere on the phone to a girl Dean vaguely remembered in New England.

"All my bar staff is gone." Marty griped as he glanced around. "I don't know when Lillian will come back."

"Where are all the others?" Dean pulled on his beer and barely picked his head up to look Marty in the face but not in the eye.

"Left this morning. Amanda, Gary and Mary… all going home… with Nathan."

"They left Lillian?"

"And Stan." Bobby threw in. "Saw him back there with her earlier."

"They were taking Nathan home to his parents as I understood it." Marty nodded and took a shot. "Dean, what in the hell happened out there?"

"It didn't win." Dean poured himself a fourth shot and slammed it. "It was strong. Stronger than anything I've ever seen on this Earth. The guys had these… knives and throwing stars. It just wouldn't go down. We, Sammy and me, pumped it full of buckshot. Stuff that was supposed to slow it down but it… Nathan got his hands on it… and it got its hands on Nathan." He motioned with his hands that they cancelled each other out. "Pttth. End of story."

"That's it?" Bobby stared at the young man.

"I don't know what happened. I don't know what Nathan did. All I know is… It screamed like something I've never heard. Like it had seven voices and each one was in the worst pain it had ever felt. Gary and Sam pulled Nathan back but he was already… gasping for air… like his… like I don't know. I was watching it. My eyes were on it. I was still unloading my gun into it with the buckshot, reloading when I got the chance. It went up in flames. I'm talking an inferno straight from what's it called." He snapped his fingers at the men.

"Dante?"

"That's the thing. I mean… hotter than any flame I've ever felt. Smelled like… skunks and sulfur. I turned around and Nathan is fighting with Gary and Sam. Shoving them away with this… wild look in his eyes. I swear to God that his eyes went completely black. Not just his… irises or whatever… the whole eyeball, blacker than tar." He downed two shots in quick succession. That had been the last expression he'd seen on Nathan's face. "Then Gary lets go of him like he got burned… and I guess he did because Sammy was backing away with his hands in front of his face. Then he… burst into flames. He didn't scream. I remember that. He didn't. He just fell to his knees and burned up."

"What took you guys so long to come back?" Bobby stared at Dean like he had two heads.

"I promised Lillian that I'd bring him home. I waited until he went out. I put him in the only thing I could find. Then the sirens came. We had to hightail it in the opposite direction… it meant going around and that took longer. We drove straight through."

"Why do you look like shit?" Marty gestured to the cuts and bruises all over both Winchesters.

"It was a demon. They all have telekinesis or something, I guess. If it wasn't Sam and Gary flying over my head, I was flying over theirs. There were boulders and trees and each other to break our falls." Dean couldn't see straight but it didn't matter, all he could see was that damned field. "I wish I knew what it was. I want to call it something." He sniffed and wiped a stray tear away. "I wish I could have done more to save him. He was a good guy."

Marty poured them all another round. "To Nathan."

"Nathan." Bobby nodded.

"Nathan Sparks." Dean cleared his throat and tossed the shot back. "Call Sammy. I need to get to the room."

"Fuck it all. He did it again." Marty groaned but slapped the bar. "Sam! Come get your brother. Take him to his room."

The Next Day…

(September 4, 2008)

Kyle opened the door at the knock. It wasn't late but he'd been trying to get Liz to sleep for about an hour. It was the younger Winchester. "Hey."

"Hey… is Lillian around?" Sam shoved his hands into his pants. "I… was looking for Dean when I realized I hadn't seen her at all these last days. How is she doing?"

"I want her to sleep. She wants to drink herself stupid." Kyle shrugged. "She mourns with liquor, I think."

"You think?"

"The last time… anyone close to her died, she hit the bottle. It's a rare occasion that renders her helpless." Kyle opened the door wider so Sam could see for himself the empty vessel of a woman sitting beside the foot of the bed, playing with an empty bottle. "Lillian, someone to see you."

Sam stepped carefully into the room and knelt to look her in the eye. "Hey. You okay?"

"Did it feel like this for you?" Liz lifted her eyes to his. "When she died? Did you feel like you were dead inside?"

"Yeah, that and a whole lot worse. Maybe someday, I'll tell you about it. I don't think you're ready to hear it."

"I'm probably not." She stared at him for a minute longer before she spun the bottle into a corner. Kyle was right. She was just feeling sorry for herself but she needed something to help her get out of the hole she was in. "I need to hear somebody say it out loud… how he died… Dean… he didn't say."

Sam sat on the floor to look her in the eye. "It's going to be hard to hear but you do need to hear it."

"Tell me."

"When we got there, the guys were just getting a bead on where it was going. They were going to cut it off before another innocent man died. We got to them first. We tried to talk them into waiting a while. Gary wouldn't hear of it. They wanted us to leave. Dean pulled Nathan aside. I don't know what he told him but Nathan agreed to it and we all went to the field to wait. Nathan did something on his own before he joined us. It was maybe an hour later when it showed up. It looked just like any regular man. Dean and I tried our tricks but salt and Latin didn't work, just like you said." Sam took a breath. "It got violent. We all got hurt. Some things happened so fast, I'm not sure they actually did. Somehow, Nathan got close to it. He stabbed it through the heart with a dagger. It touched his chest before we could pull him away. Dean kept shooting it with that buckshot you gave us. It burned up… and then Nathan started burning too."

"Did he hurt?" She whispered.

"He didn't even scream. The thing did. It screamed so loud I thought I was going to go deaf. I wanted to leave right away but Dean made us wait. When the fires died down, he took the ashes so we could bring them to you. He made you a promise…"

"And he kept it. I know." Liz leaned back against the bed. "I just… wondered if…"

"He loved you. That's why he went out there. To kill it. For you." Sam squeezed her hand. "Be better, Lillian. You're strong."

"It's not fair." She shook her head. "I was supposed to have his children. We were going to grow old and gray together."

"It's not fair. I was supposed to be a lawyer. I was going to have a wife and kids and a white picket fence and no weapons. Now I don't." Sam brushed her hair out of her face. "I'm sorry that it doesn't get to be Nathan you have that with but maybe you will have that… someday with someone."

"It won't be the same. He was the love of my life."

"No." Kyle cleared his throat. "It won't be the same. But someday, not any day soon. You'll meet someone. You'll have those kids and the house and you'll tell your daughters about the love of your life. You'll tell them how you can heal from loss and how you can continue to live after you think you've lost it all."

Liz calmed some but she wasn't in the room. She was with her last memories of her husband. She leaned on Kyle when he hugged her and squeezed Sam's hand when he offered it. She would be okay. She still had friends. Then the phone rang.

Kyle hopped up to answer it. "Hello? … Yeah… Yeah, she's here." He turned to them on the floor. "It's your mom. The guys are there already. She wants to talk."

Liz wiped her eyes and stood to take the phone. "Mom?" The tears came unbidden as she listened to her mother's voice. A voice she hadn't heard in over six years. Listening to her mother's words and reason, Liz took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm okay, Mom. I have friends here who are looking after me… Yeah… I'm sorry but I just can't… I can't… Mom, I can't be there without him… I know… I love you, too… Where's Dad?… Okay… It's as safe as it's ever going to get…"

"I'll go." Sam got to his feet. "Dean's probably half in the bottle already."

"He doing okay?" Kyle asked absently.

"He… doesn't really make friends and Nathan was a friend." Sam explained briefly. Explaining it put it in perspective for himself. "He made a promise to her and he only kind of kept it. He… doesn't do things that way." That was true. One hundred percent Dean. "He lives by the Code. Whatever that is. He knows the rules and he thinks he broke them."

Three days later…

(September 7, 2008)

Liz picked at one of many casseroles when she decided she couldn't possibly eat everything she had stored in her refrigerator. Kyle would love to take some. He'd already helped her eat so many. Bobby could always use food he didn't cook himself. Marty might take one if she guilted him into it. She packed up a few to try her luck and to try work on a slow night. She had to test the waters before she committed to working every night for Marty again.

She had taken a week and she would take no more. Max was gone for good. She couldn't change that. She was Liz Evans. She was stronger than to crawl into herself and die. She wanted to. She hadn't felt Max die but she could feel the hole where he once had a warm place in her soul. He wouldn't ever go to work or come home to share their bed. Would no longer regale her with stories of the Rutherford guys or explain his adventures in cooking while she tasted his latest concoction. Would not cuddle with her on break, or when the nights were cool. Would never make love to her…

Sighing, she knew she was only depressing herself more. Fixing her hair, she made the trek to Marty's. Sam was sitting at the bar with a pile of clippings and his dad's journal open in front of him. Liz unceremoniously dropped a casserole on top of his work. "Bon appétit."

"What's this?" He blinked at her.

"One of about a zillion casseroles that showed up in my house over the last week. I'm sick of making the effort to taste them all. I'm sick of looking at them crowding my refrigerator." She sank onto the stool next to him.

"Thanks. Home cooked food will be a welcome change." He offered her a grateful smile. Hers didn't reach her eyes but he remembered how that felt.

She placed a second one on top of that one. "There's one for your brother." She caught his look. "I know how you guys are. I'd only be whetting your appetites. You're all bottomless pits."

"If I can get him to stop drinking long enough to taste one, I'm sure he'd appreciate it, too." He shook his head at his brother, though for once, he was not in the bar.

"Is he drinking a lot, again?" Liz put a reassuring hand on Sam's shoulder. She wasn't the only one involved. It was her husband but they had been there. Had seen what had been done.

"He's hit a road block, I think. He doesn't want to hunt. He doesn't want to pick up girls. He's been drinking since last week and if he's eaten, I haven't seen it." He sighed heavily. "I almost wish I'd get a head splitting vision, just so he'd snap out of it."

"Maybe he's realizing his own mortality." She remembered when it had happened to her. When she realized that she had almost died. That her friends could die. It was a lonely and dark place to be if there wasn't something worth living for.

"That was a few years back. This is different. It's kind of scary." He shrugged and looked her over. He asked the question his face had held since he laid eyes on her. "Are you okay?"

"I'm as okay as I can be." She shrugged and sniffed a little. "It stills feels a little like a bad dream that I can't wake up from."

"Yeah." He opened his jacket. "I thought you might want these."

"What's all this?" She frowned when he laid weapons on the bar.

"We pulled them out of the demon's ashes. We left the buckshot but these weren't harmed much by the fire." He kept his voice soft so no one else would hear. Liz fingered the knives and blades, recalling the story he had shared with her a few days before. They were simply made but elegant in design. "The stars were Gary's but the knives and daggers were Nathan's." He pointed one out. "That's the killing blade."

"Kivar." She whispered as she picked it up.

"What?" Sam frowned.

"That was his name. Kivar." Liz spun the dagger around her fingers. She gripped the handle and set it down. She ran her fingers over the knives. She could imagine Max's long fingers curling around their shiny handles. Guilt slammed into her again. For Max. For Dean. "Take care of your brother, Sam. Don't let him beat himself up too badly… if it weren't for the two of you… I could have lost everything in this world that I cherish. I love my husband but… Kivar wouldn't have stopped at killing us. He had to be stopped… at any cost."

Sam was unnerved by the ferocity of her words but if he had learned anything about the odd things that sometimes tumbled out of her mouth, it was that they had to be accepted. "I think I understand."

"That's the price we had to pay. It was a great sacrifice but it had to be done… right?" Liz's eyes shone with tears but she didn't let them fall. "One man for the lives of billions?"

"Maybe I shouldn't have brought them." He reached for them to put them back in his jacket but she beat him to it, sliding them underneath the bar.

"No. I'm okay. I think. I just… it's soon. Maybe too soon. I need to work though. I can't pay the bills with casseroles." She joked lamely. "I've got to get to my tables."

* * *

TBC 


	22. Chapter 21

Part 21 – A month later…

(October 7, 2008)

Sam picked up Dean's phone when his cut out. He dialed quickly. "Hey."

"Hi." Liz nodded into the phone. "Was that you, just now?"

"Yeah. I was trying to call and check up on you but my phone died. I need to get a new one. The battery is shot… then again, there's no telling how many times it's been dropped and tossed around during a scuffle."

"A scuffle." She half laughed at his choice of words. "Don't you mean a battle to the death with the forces of evil?"

"Something like that." He nodded to the phone with a laugh himself. "So, you sound okay."

"Yeah. I'm fine. I'm getting back into a routine. Thanks for calling. It's nice to hear a voice that isn't crying when they talk to me. When my sister-in-law and Ma-ry call, they're usually crying or asking if I'm crying. They gave my mom my number and she calls every morning and I can hear that she's been crying even though I tell her that I'm okay. I'm sick of crying. I miss him but… I can do without the crying these days. I have happy memories."

"Hang on to those." Sam advised while he steered the car in a direction that wasn't going to get them slammed head on by a semi. "Stan still sleeping on your floor?"

"I got him a bed. A proper bed. He's staying with me now instead of at the hotel. It's temporary. He's looking for a place of his own so that he can bring chicks to his place instead of shelling out for a room or trying to sneak out of some strange girl's bed in the middle of the night." She laughed a little. "He knows how to cheer me up though."

"Who the fuck are you talking to?" Dean complained, pulling his jacket off his head.

"Lillian." Sam called back.

"Oh. Whatever." He pulled his jacket back over his head.

"What?" Liz frowned.

"Oh. Nothing. Dean says hi." Sam whacked his brother.

Liz rolled her eyes and let out a chuckle. "No, he didn't. That grouch is probably cursing me out under his breath."

"Probably. I'm using his phone."

"Well, then, shall we run up his minutes?"

"That was my plan." He smiled at the road. "It good to hear you laugh."

"It's good to be able to laugh."

The next night…

(October 8, 2008)

Kyle plopped himself down at the bar and opened a menu but Liz already had his dinner ready and set it in front of him. And it was exactly what he would have picked off the menu had he a chance to look. "You are the best roomie ever."

"Thanks." Liz shrugged.

"So… you were on the phone late last night." He commented as he poured ketchup over his fries. He eyed her but she didn't seem to react to his question.

"Sam." She tallied up a couple of checks and set them next to her work station behind the bar.

"Winchester?"

"Do you know any other Sam?" She straightened out at the expression on his face. "What?"

He shook his head and leaned on his elbows over his food. He didn't know quite how to take the information. "I didn't know you were over the big cheese already."

"Would you quit calling him that?" Liz rolled her eyes. She had always hated that particular nickname Kyle had for Max. "I'm not over him. Sam called and we talked. He knows what I'm going through."

"Oh yeah?"

"He lost someone like I did." She felt so exasperated at having to feel like she should explain talking to a friend. "It feels good to talk to someone who's been in this dark place and doesn't feel the need to make me cry it out."

"Oh." Kyle nodded to his plate. "He can't be the funny guy though. That's my job. If he takes my job, I'll deck him."

"I'll let him know." Liz stared out at the bar. It was a slow night. Not even a few truckers. Just a hunter or two. She'd learned to identify them by how long Marty lingered at their tables when he walked through. By the odd scars on their faces and arms. By the unshorn cheeks and worn clothes. The way they stared through the walls when they drank their beers. Like they all had one foot on this green earth and the other in a grave.

A month later…

(December 8, 2008)

"I got all the clues backwards." Liz explained to Sam over the phone. She had taken to talking to him late at night when her well-meaning friend was asleep. When Dean was asleep wherever they were. "I haven't had any lately. The last vision I had was of him dying but I still thought and hoped that it wouldn't be too late to stop it. I had all sorts of visions before that. For years and I only put them all together when it was too late to change the course much. Different things that led up to it but… I got them all backwards."

"When did it start? You having the visions?"

"Years ago. Back home before I graduated high school. These visions. The ones about how it would all happen that day. I think they started in '03. We'd been on the road over a year. I started having dreams of being with another man. Some guy that I'd never seen, never met. The feelings I got from that vision were so confusing that I smashed them down. I thought I was doing a good job until I had it in the van with everyone listening to me… um, talking in my sleep. My husband included. So, I talked about it and everyone just said I needed to get laid. That we hadn't had enough time alone. They stopped after a while. I forgot about it."

"But you didn't really."

"No, it was always there in the back of my mind, I guess. I ran into him, the guy, sometime later that same year. It clicked for a second but I was out and gone and I didn't give it another thought." She took a breath. Having to remember all the places she'd laid her head and how one had blended into the next for a long time. It made her weary just thinking about it. "We settled down here in Valor Springs, stopped running and I got so busy playing house that I didn't have visions and if there were clues, I didn't heed them. There just seemed to be no need to look over my shoulder when the visions and dreams seemed to say that everything was safe enough. When I met you guys, there was something I didn't like about Dean but I couldn't put my finger on it."

"Yeah, we all got that." Sam managed a wry laugh at the memory of watching Liz shoot Dean down on that first night. Dean was not on his game so fresh from Dad's death but he had wanted to try to nail their hot waitress.

"It was like I recognized something about him but I just couldn't… It wasn't his attitude that I hated. I wasn't really bothered by him leering. I've been leered at plenty in that bar." She laughed ruefully because it was true. She'd been leered at plenty worse and not reacted so swiftly or mercilessly on any of them. "There was something in his eyes that just… I know now that there was something missing all that time. I just didn't put it together until that day at Bobby's."

"How do you mean?"

"You and Dean were in a bad place when you stumbled into Marty's that day we met. Dean laughed and joked but it never reached his eyes."

"Yeah. He was torn up. We both were."

"I went to Bobby's one night to deliver some food. He had to find his money so I was looking around his office. You guys had gone. Nathan and Gary were gone. I didn't know yet that things were starting to go badly. I started looking at some pictures on his desk, wishing I had more of my friends. Then I saw this picture on the desk. A man and his two boys sitting on a car. I recognized your father first."

Sam sat up in his bed. "Dad? How would you recognize Dad?"

"I met him once, briefly. It was in a hotel room in Racine. I went into the wrong room and fell asleep. I woke up next to Dean when your father walked in chewing him out for bringing a girl into the room. I didn't know them then. I just knew I was in the wrong place and I ran out. But I saw his eyes that night. Eyes from a dream I'd had. I didn't recognize Dean when you two came in that night. It'd been so long. But at Bobby's, I saw that picture of the three of you and I knew what it all meant. Dean's eyes were missing the laughter I'd seen when I first met him with your Dad. I had trouble wrapping my head around it all."

"I'm confused, Lillian."

"I was too. I couldn't deal. The only way I could be with any man but my husband would be if he were gone. Dead. To be with Dean that way. To be with him and feel the things I felt in that first vision. I had to have moved on and healed. It would have been different if I didn't wake up from the visions in my husband's arms. These dreams were killing me but I had to try to save him. When I saw how you all could die… I had to do the math. One dead. Two dead. Four dead. Twenty dead. The only way all four lived was if it lived too and it had to die. I got you all the information you needed, the equipment. I could only hope that getting you there would somehow save his life."

"Sounds really hard." Sam swallowed down a lump. He put it all together through her rambling. It had to have been hard. To dream you had moved on from your husband's death before you even knew he was going to die.

"Understatement. I didn't ask to make these decisions but it's my responsibility to save as many lives as I can… right? Max would have understood that, I think."

"Max?" Sam repeated and then he remembered. "Right. Max was his real name."

"Did I tell you that?" Liz sniffed and absently wiped at her eyes.

"Dean found out right before, we were hunting it too… and… it doesn't matter. We forgot about it all after everything that happened." Sam tried to reassure her. "You're not really Lillian Sparks, right?"

"Liz Evans, formerly Liz Parker."

"That's a name that fits you."

"I always loved the way he said my name." She smiled a bit. Then she sobered after she realized she'd rambled on for hours. "Don't tell Dean about what I said. I probably shouldn't have said anything but… it felt good to tell someone. Kyle would never understand."

"I think I do. I won't say anything to him."

"It's absurd. I really don't see it. I can't."

"Then don't. Forget about it. Maybe you dreamed it so you could prevent it. Cause seriously, to rebound with Dean? Preventable."

Liz laughed out loud and nearly woke Kyle because of it. "Maybe. Thanks, Sam."

The next day…

(December 9, 2008)

Dean picked up his cell phone and found it was nearly drained of charge. Cursing, he dug out the power cord and plugged it in. Tossing his things around, he let it charge for ten minutes before opening it to make a phone call. As he was hanging up with his contact, his brother stumbled into the room with breakfast. "Dude, I can appreciate your phone is fucked but you forget to charge my phone again and I'll tie you to the bumper."

"Sorry." Sam tossed his brother a bottle of juice.

He blinked at the label. That wasn't his morning Jolt. "What's this shit?"

"You were coughing yesterday."

"I was in a smoky bar." Brows furrowed, he stared at his brother. "I cough in smoky bars. Everyone does… including the guys who are smoking."

"Whatever. We have to stay healthy." Sam opened his own bottle of juice. "Soda is not breakfast. Juice is breakfast."

Damn it to hell, his brother was turning into one of those tofu-eating freaks. Today was just not going his way and it had barely started. "If there's not sausage in those boxes, I'm gonna kill someone."

"Of course there's sausage." Sam scoffed and downed half his juice in a gulp.

Dean grabbed the box to make sure. He dug into his sausage and eggs and eyed his dying phone again. "So, Lillian get a vision or something?"

"We were just talking." Sam waved him off.

"Just talking?"

"She's a nice girl. We were talking." Sam spoke slowly so his dimwitted brother would understand.

"Long enough to kill my battery."

"Would you get off it? I'll charge it next time. I was tired. I went to sleep."

"Whatever. Don't let it happen it again."

A month later…

(January 8, 2009)

Sam breathed out slowly. He had a lot to say and he had to say it to someone who wouldn't make jokes. If he was going to have to sit in the cold and wait for Dean, he was going to use Dean's phone. "We didn't know different… well, I didn't. Dean's older, you know? He was four and a half when she died. He has vague memories of a normal life."

"Was it a hard life?"

"The earliest I can remember…" He closed his eyes to capture those fuzzy images. "It was a Christmas. Little Debbie cupcakes and matchbox cars. All things you can pick up at 7-Eleven in the middle of the night, I later realized. We played and Dad fell asleep on a chair. I was curious. Dad's OJ didn't smell like ours. I took a drink and it made me sick. Nearly threw up all over Dean."

"Mimosa?" Liz asked, hoping to lighten his mood a bit.

"I wish. Oso Negro. He drank pretty heavily when there was no active hunting going on." Sam sighed heavily. "You might think I'm pretty selfish but I never realized how much pain he was in to drink that much."

"What did you think about when you were around him?"

"I thought it made him mean when I was little. You know, because he wouldn't talk and he wouldn't play with me. He just pointed to Dean and suggested we work on our martial arts or our shooting or some shit. It's pretty safe to say that Dean raised me as much as Dad did, which is sad because if he was half-raising me… who was raising Dean. When I got older… I just thought it was pathetic. I just wanted him to get over it. I didn't remember Mom. I didn't remember the night she died. I just wanted us to settle down somewhere and live normal lives. I wanted high school dances and college applications… not shotguns and ritual exorcisms." A long pause lay on the line. "When Jess died, I was in my own head. While I could understand, I was resistant to cut him any slack on how he raised us. Warriors instead of princes, you know?

"By the time I could really understand… I lost him and I was still consumed by the need to hunt the thing down but Dean was my focus… Because he's… he hasn't… He's not himself. Not in a long time. He puts on a good show of his old self but I'm his brother. I know him better than I know myself. He can't fool me. He's been doing really badly since… well, you know when."

"I can relate to that."

"He keeps beating himself up over it. It's not his fault and it's not the first time we lost one. It's just the first time we lost someone that he knew so well. Dean and Nathan got to know each other pretty well, I guess." He drew out a breath. "We accepted long ago that people die in the course of tracking demons but… we really thought we could get in and out without a problem."

"I'd never lost someone since I started getting my visions, Sam. I understand the guilt that comes with not being able to change the course of events… and to have someone die because of it." Liz shut her eyes and had to get off the subject. "Did you love her? Jess?"

"I was going to ask her to marry me. I had a ring picked out. I was just waiting for the right moment because I knew I was going to have to tell her the truth about how I grew up and what really lay in the dark." He took a deep breath to clear his mind. "It was a running fight we had. How secretive I was about my childhood. Why there were things I didn't know about that everyone else seemed to. She only pressed because she loved me. I know that. I wanted to marry her but I wanted her innocence to stay."

"You never got the chance to ask her?" That thought made her heart sink. What if she had never had those years with Max? She almost hadn't. She had at least had him for a while. At least she'd had six anniversaries as his wife. Six years, two months and three weeks with the man she loved.

"My life got in the way. Dean stopped in to tell me that Dad had gone missing. That it was very unusual. We thought he was in trouble. I left her and Dean promised to get me home in time for my law school interview. He kept his word but he wanted me to keep hunting with him… like old times. And I considered it for a moment. I had missed it but… I loved her. We got into town late. I said my goodbyes to Dean on the street. I tried not to wake her up. She had baked my favorite cookies and left them out for me. She was always doing things like that for me." He let himself smile for all the cookies and cakes and meals left in the microwave when he'd been up working or studying. "I got to the bedroom but it was empty. I figured she'd be back any moment. She was just giving me some of my own medicine. I lay down to sleep, thinking… someday, she'll be my wife. Then I felt the blood. It landed on my forehead. Two drops before I realized it was weird, that I wasn't imagining the warmth or the stickiness. I opened my eyes and I saw her on the ceiling… bleeding. She couldn't talk and then she was on fire. The whole room just… caught in a blink. If it wasn't for Dean, I might have died trying to save her. I think a piece of me did… and now… getting these visions of others like me… developing powers that scare me…"

"It's almost too much to take."

"Right." He took a moment to find his breath. "When he drinks the way he does, he reminds me of Dad and Dad was not always there for us. I'm afraid that I'm going to be out there, hunting, with half of Dean. The smell of booze coming off of him, mixed with that cologne he wears… I get so nervous that I want to stop and vomit."

"Have you talked to him about the drinking?"

"Talked about it, hinted about, fought about it. Until he does screw up, I really don't have any ammunition to throw at him but I'm afraid that come the day he does screw up, somebody will die."

"Maybe he'll come around on his own."

"Maybe." Sam sighed heavily when he got a look at his brother approaching. He knew the first thing out of Dean's mouth was that he needed a drink. "I'll talk to you later."

"Okay. Take care of yourself and try not to worry too much about Dean."

Dean looked over his little brother and the phone. "You kill the battery?"

"Not yet."

"Good. I need a drink. Come on. I'll tell you what I was told and then we can hit the hay. It's gonna be a long day tomorrow."

* * *

TBC 


	23. Chapter 22

AN: So all this rapid posting has been about me playing catch up someplace new. '-) Starting today, the posts may come but once or twice a week, just like everywhere else I post this story. I'd like to thank those who are reading and the gal who reviewed. I appreciate it. Also, gonna say I am still a bit dazed from my viewing of A Few Good Men last week. I'm still... dazed, yeah. But in a few days, I should be able to write something without drooling on my keyboard. Jensen, Lou, Ben, Lydia all rocked that stage!

* * *

Part 22 – A few months later… 

(March 3, 2009)

Liz offered the Winchester men half a smile when they walked in. She was busy balancing Marty's books. She was halfway done. It was twice as fast as it normally took Marty and she had a feeling it meant he was going to ask her to do it more often and not necessarily in exchange for a pay upgrade. She had to look up when Kyle leaned on the bar in front of her, bouncing. "What's up?"

"Betty Lou and me is what's up."

"Betty Lou? From the Quick 'N Save?" Liz blinked at him.

"She's been checking out my ass when I unload stuff from the bottom of my cart. She brought her car in to be fixed. I asked her out." Kyle grinned. "So, uh… I gotta take her somewhere and I can't think. I need a picnic."

"Stan!" Liz whined and collapsed over the ledgers. "I'm tired. I don't want to cook for your conquests."

"Come on. Something simple but shows I'm thoughtful."

"Thoughtful enough to get your oldest friend in the world to make it for you."

Kyle plied her with his big blue eyes. "Come on. Picnic fare. Potato salad. Some sort of sandwich. Fried chicken is greasy and I plan on… doing some touching. That awesome desert thing you made that time."

"Stan." Liz straightened. "I'm working. Go away."

"Please. Tomorrow. Please." He begged.

"Fine. Tomorrow. I'll think of something."

"Thank you. Thank you." Kyle reached behind the bar for a beer and disappeared to the other side of the bar where some of his garage buddies were having a late lunch.

Liz finished the previous night's tallies and closed the book. She set it under the bar, then grabbed two bottles. She placed each in front of a Winchester and watched as they pored over a wide mélange of clippings and printouts. "Are we on the hunt?"

"Hey." Sam picked up his head at her voice, and then he stood to give her a hug. "Good to see you."

"This isn't just a pit stop is it?" She asked as her eyes flicked over the papers.

"Not really." Sam shook his head. Dean kept his eyes on the paper in his hand, a pen pressed to his mouth. "So, go light on the beer tonight and heavy on the carbs. We need our energy."

"What did I tell you about eating all that crap?" Liz smacked him. "Have you been following any of my advice?"

"Some." Sam fought a smile but nodded that he had been. "I've been drinking OJ instead of Orange Crush."

"Good."

"Hold up." Dean sat up, both hands in the air, letting his pen drop to the table, and looked at the two of them. Hands on his thighs, he took a breath. "Are you the reason I can't have my Jolt in the morning?"

"What?" Liz blinked at him.

"Sammy… I swear. You're the first thing I kill after this thing." Dean tossed his pen down. "I'm going for cup of coffee and a Jolt. I'm not eating an orange or an apple or fucking broccoli." He grabbed his jacket. "Then I'm coming back here for a beer. Problem with that, Madam Sparks?"

Liz just shook her head and watched him go. "What was that all about?"

"I can't break my habits by myself." Sam sighed heavily. "He's a bad influence. He hasn't been off his frozen burritos very long. Swapping out his Jolt for juice was just too much of a change for him."

"I can't believe you made him do it with you." Liz giggled. "And I can't believe he let it go on this long."

"I showed him a microwave lasagna and since then… he's been listening with at least one ear. So… I do need my energy. Get us something on the menu that won't kill us young."

"I'll do my best." She promised.

--

Marty sat with the boys to look over their notes and to give his opinion when he noticed that his best waitress was just standing next to an empty table with an empty beer bottle in each hand. "Lillian?"

Sam and Dean looked up. Dean cursed under his breath; he'd seen that look on her face before. "Oh shit." He was out of his seat and catching her before she could hit the ground. Her body shook and her eyes rolled back in her head. "Lillian… Lillian!"

Sam helped his brother lay her out and wave off curious patrons. "Lillian? Can you hear me?"

Suddenly, she gasped for air and sat bolt upright. Flashes of something were unclear while the lights were so bright in the bar. Liz scrambled away from her vision. Then it had her. She screamed.

"Lillian!" Sam shouted in her face. "It's me. It's Sam."

The whole bar was fixed on the hysterical waitress. Liz stopping screaming and when her tear-filled eyes cleared, she saw three concerned faces hovering over her.

"Nothing to see here." Dean waved them off. He reached down and hauled her into his arms. He carried her into the back of the bar where Marty kept his office. Dean set her down in the office chair then poured a circle of salt around her. "Okay. You're safe. Okay?"

Marty took a pad from his desk and set it front of her. "What did you see?"

"I don't know." Liz sniffed. Sam gave her a look of encouragement. "It was big. Over six foot… maybe seven foot tall. Broad. Like two men across. Um… Brown-green with… claws…"

"How many claws?" Dean flicked his gaze to Sam.

"Five… fingers but… only… three claws." She held up her hand and folded down her thumb and forefinger. "The forefinger leaves a drag—"

"A drag mark." Sam cursed to himself. Dean was already there.

"You're gonna stay in that chair until we come get you." Dean pointed and strode out the door.

"You think it's coming here?" Sam raced after him.

"She fits the profile. It's coming here." Dean popped the trunk and unlocked the gun locker. "Brown hair. Brown eyes. Midget psychic. It's coming for her."

"We don't know that."

"You're the one that dragged me back here, Sam. I was good on the road." He found his shells full of consecrated iron pellets. "You said she was a likely candidate since we were in the area and then she goes and has a vision that looked to me like she was being attacked."

Marty raced out the door to the younger men. "She drew this."

It was crude but it was definitely in the area… directly behind the bar. Dean looked to his brother and made a snap decision. "You stay with her. I'll wait out back."

"Dean, no. What if it thinks you're in the way?"

"I plan to be in the way. Go in there. You're the second line. Don't tell her it's coming for her. She'll bolt." Dean looked to Marty. "Keep the commotion low. Get Pete and Bobby to stand look out. Tell them not to get in its way unless I'm looking like I'm dead."

Sam stared at his brother. "You're doing it again."

"Yeah. And?" Dean slammed the trunk shut then pumped his shotgun. "It's not getting passed me."

--

Liz sat in the desk chair, sipping at her water, when Sam walked in with a shotgun. "Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah, it was just a scary vision. I couldn't see a victim. Usually, I can. It just… came right at me." She fixed her eyes on her glass. "I'm just… it's the first vision I've had since…"

"Nathan." Sam nodded, his eyes flicked to the high dusty window.

"I had kind of hoped my vision-having days were over." She waved off his look of concern.

"I'm sorry that they aren't."

"Is it going to come here?" She asked with both hands on her glass of water.

He stared at her for a long moment. "No. Dean and Bobby are coming up with a surefire way to kill it. I just… wanted to make sure you weren't alone. When they figure it out, they'll come and get me."

"It's a demon, isn't it."

"Yeah." Sam nodded.

"How can you tell?"

"Everything has its traits. Spirits don't usually travel unless they're haunting an object or a person in particular. Rarely do they fixate on a pattern, although if there's a conduit of some kind… Demons kill whatever, whenever, wherever but they always have a choice. Some unsolved serial murders can actually be attributed to demon rampages."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. My dad had a theory that Jack the Ripper was a demon. He always wanted to go look at the places it killed. But there was way too much killing and evil right here in the good old US."

"I always wanted to travel. See the seven wonders. I was afraid that I wouldn't live long enough to see them. I was… waiting on him. You know? Until it was safe for him but we realized that the perfect place to nab us was at customs. So we put it behind us. A pipe dream." Liz wiped at her eyes. "Sorry. Having a vision just…"

"I understand. We'll kill it and that'll be that." Just as he spoke, a gunshot and then six rang out.

"What's that?" Liz leaped out of her chair, swirling around to face the wall with the dingy window but it was too high for her to look out. Sam climbed onto the desk and peered outside. "What is it?"

"Do you guys mind? We were having a meaningful conversation in here." Sam called out once he got the window cracked open.

"Don't mind us! We were just killing a demon without you, Sammy!" Dean's voice called back.

"Is it really dead or are you being flip?"

"Flip? What are you? A girl? Get out here and help us get rid of this thing."

Liz watched Sam hop down off the desk. "What? It's over?"

"Yeah. Guess I missed out on the action." He slung the shotgun over his shoulder. "Do you want me to stay or are you okay?"

"I'm fine… I think." Liz nodded and watched him go. Not sure what had happened or why. When Marty returned from outside, he told her to go on home. She almost insisted on working the remainder of her shift but she couldn't help but feel she needed the rest. Her first vision since Max had died and she wasn't even sure what had really happened.

Making her way passed Bobby and onto the property, Liz steered around her cottage. The day had held way too much excitement. She wasn't looking forward to going home to her cold bed, though. She kicked around the junk piles while Pete and Bobby closed up for the day, their bodies moving in the weary ways of those who had been much more active than on any normal day. So absorbed into her own little world, Liz would have been just another brooder if not for the trail of bottle caps from his perch to whatever he had designated as a bull's-eye.

"Evenin', Ma'am Sparks. How fair you?" Dean slurred out.

"Fine… now, I guess." She barely glanced at him; she wasn't in the mood to deal with him and his ever-changing moods. He'd been rude on arrival, gentle when she'd had her vision, and then dismissive once he knew about what was in her vision. "Did you get hit in the head?"

"Bald-faced lie." He burped and tossed another bottle cap amongst the others.

Liz just stared at him. She'd seen him drunk before but she had never seen him as hammered as he appeared to be. She hadn't served him nearly enough to do this to him before they had shot out the door on their hunt. "You didn't get this drunk off of beer."

"No, I didn't… I was drinking some Jose when Jim told me that Bud would make me sick if I drank him last."

"I think you have it backwards."

"Well… I was in the mood to projectile vomit anyway." He grinned stupidly. The sunset lit up the tear tracks like liquid gold.

"Are you okay?"

The grin faded. "Do I look ok?"

"Was the demon a hard kill?"

"The demon… was small potatoes. Lower level pantywaist." He waved her off. "Don't I look like I had a good time? I don't look okay?"

"Not… sitting in that… thing you aren't." She whispered as she realized that he was sitting inside the Impala. Sitting in the backseat where she had felt Death's fingerprints. "Can't you drink someplace else?"

"Nope. Sammy's got the hotel room on booze ban and I am not allowed in Marty's tonight." Dean finished off the bottle and reached for Jim and Jose beside him. "Care to join me?"

"Not really. Night, Dean." She turned to go on her way.

But Dean couldn't let up. He held out a bottle to her. "Come on. Imbibe a little. I won't tell. You won't lose your squeaky clean reputation."

"Why are you sitting in there, Dean?" Liz tried to keep the tremble out of her voice. Her last experience with the car still haunted her.

"It's my car. I'll sit in it if I want."

"Please, don't." She begged.

"Why shouldn't I sit here?"

"Just don't sit there, in that seat."

"Why?" He took another drink.

"Dean… that's where…" She was at a loss at what to tell him anymore.

"I know what happened… I was there."

"But that's where he died!" She blurted out, tears creeping into her voice. The words hit Dean like a ton of bricks. The bottle fell out of his hand and spilled on the dirt. He stared at her and her glistening eyes, her shaking hands and the white of her face. "I didn't mean to say it like that."

"What did you say?"

"I didn't mean to say that." The words tumbled off her lips, her arms wrapping around her midsection.

"Say it again." His hands dropped onto his thighs.

"That's where he died…in the back… in that seat." She spoke slowly. His eyes closed and a tear slid down his dusty face. Roughly, he wiped it away, green eyes dark and stormy… almost black in the shadows. "I'm sorry."

"You felt that?" He turned his eyes on her.

"Felt what?"

"The person who sat here died? That night of the crash?"

"Yes." She nodded, taking an unconscious step backward.

"How do you know that?" His chin trembled as he asked the question.

"Aside from all the bloodstains? I could feel Death… you know… with a capital D." She didn't know how else to explain it to him. She just knew. Somewhere deep inside her had recognized the darkness that came with death on that seat.

"How?"

"Maybe because the blood is still there." She whispered with a slight shrug. She hardly knew herself but she could theorize the hell out of it if it didn't scare her half to death. "I can feel what happened to the man it belongs to."

"You felt his death?"

"Yes." She nodded and wiped at her eyes. The day had been entirely too eventful and too emotional. "So, please… drink yourself to a stupor if you have to but just don't do it there."

--

Sam glanced up from his clippings when Dean stumbled in the door looking like he'd seen a ghost. "Done drinking?"

"For tonight, yeah." Dean nodded and sank onto his bed. He just wanted to sleep and forget the scene at Bobby's.

"Are you okay?" Sam frowned at his brother. His face was dirty and his eyes were red; neither was unusual but neither usually came with Dean walking into the hotel room of his own accord.

"I'm fine. Just find us another hunt."

* * *

TBC 


	24. Chapter 23

Part 23 – A few weeks later…

(March 28, 2009)

Liz listened to her mom talk as she watched the clouds drift lazily through the sky. In the reflection of the window, she could see the portrait Max had drawn on the far wall. "I don't know, Mom."

"Are you doing anything for yourself? Besides working?"

"I was thinking about taking an art class." It had always been an idle thought but she needed a hobby. Something to keep her busy when she wasn't working. To keep her mind off of how lonely she was.

"Art?"

"I don't draw so well and it calms me down."

"I suppose I could see how it would be calming. I saw you more as a poet, like your father."

"Since Max changed me, I've been more of an impressionist. Feelings and sensations. Words just don't do it justice." She rambled on to fill space. "Maybe learn about abstracts… like Picasso."

"They've stopped, haven't they? The… visions."

Liz paled and covered her mouth even though her mother couldn't see her. "Who told you about those?"

"You did… in your journal. I memorized every word before we destroyed it. Since he… passed… they've stopped, right?"

"Um… yeah. They have." Liz lied and felt awful but she could hear the stress in her mother's voice. "I just… need to be here, Mom."

"I wish you would come home. Maria and Michael are doing fine."

"And Isabel?"

"She's leaving for Boston with her husband. That's what Diane said. Isabel's pregnant. The baby is due this July."

"If they're lucky." Liz muttered.

"What was that?"

"Nothing. I'm happy for her. I'll have to get her address so I can send the baby something."

"I'll get it to you when we talk again. Diane and I have been going to lunch on Saturdays. She's upset that you haven't come back. We all are."

"I know. I'll talk to you next week, Mom." Liz said her goodbyes and hung up the phone.

--

Dean popped a few M&Ms into his mouth as he watched the planes arriving and departing from the hood of his car. He'd been having a staring contest with a lizard of some kind but the damned thing had found lunch and scurried away. Sam was in the store getting an apparently longwinded story and Dean was trying not to look at the sign a few feet from the car. Roswell 50 miles. He flicked a candied chocolate at the sign but it just bounced off.

Sam joined him on the hood and snatched away the bag of chocolate. "Man… they do not like authority figures out here."

"Shit." Dean cursed. He had wanted to avoid all things that reminded him of Nathan and Lillian. Going to their hometown was at the top of that list.

"Anyway. We do have to go into Roswell for the full story."

"You drive. I'm tired." Dean climbed off the hood and climbed into the passenger seat.

"Spontaneous combustion doesn't pique your interest?" Sam followed suit.

"I'm just tired, dude. Let's get the show on the road."

--

Liz watched as Kyle made a fool out of himself for Betty Lou. She couldn't help but be conflicted about it. She was happy that Kyle had found someone but she was jealous. She didn't want Kyle. She wanted Max. She wanted someone to do cheesy things for her. To make her feel special. She left the bowling alley early and crawled into bed. She fingered the daggers she kept in the nightstand. She kept morbidly hoping that she'd get a vision off of one of them. Just something of Max to refresh her memory. Sam or Dean must have cleaned them thoroughly because she didn't get a thing off of them, no matter how hard she tried.

--

Sam walked into the police station and walked right back out immediately. "Okay. I think that was bad."

"What happened?" Dean blinked at his brother. Usually Sam could get more cooperation out of mark easier than Dean could by plying that good boy charm. He was a boy scout and people could sense it right off the bat.

"I introduced myself and the deputy behind the desk said 'no, you're not.' I tried to explain I was an outside investigator on this rash of disappearances and he said 'no, you're not.'" Sam rubbed at his face and finger-combed back his mop of hair.

"Fuck it. Follow me." Dean rifled through his box of IDs for a matching one. He strode through the doors and knocked on the desk. He flashed his badge quickly. "Pardon my partner. He's a rookie."

"Like I told your partner. You're not on this case. We haven't asked for FBI or CIA or whatever agency you're about to tell me you're from." The deputy shook his head.

Dean frowned at the blue-eyed man. "Have we met?"

"Doubt it. Move along before I have you removed."

"Deputy…" He flicked his eyes at the badge. "Valenti. Look. We're not here to tread on your territory. We just wanted to know what you could tell us. A mention of it reached our ears. My partner is eager to get his feet wet and I'm humoring him. We'd just ask a few questions, file a report on our findings or lack thereof and he gets a recommendation… legacy." Dean rolled his eyes for effect.

"Agent Kirke…" Dean tried not to show his surprise that the officer had caught his name off his fake badge, especially when the guy seemed to be getting more and more aggravated by the second. "This town's police department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation do not have the best of relations. If you'd done your homework before you came down, you'd know that. I'm not inclined to humor your rookie partner."

"Can I ask your opinion on the disappearances?"

"They were all out-of-towners, Agent Kirke. Maybe they went home."

"Just up and left."

"It happens here sometimes. Roswell is not ideal for most people when they want to settle into a small town. We're always getting kids from Carlsbad who want to live away from mom and dad and then decide Roswell is just too unexciting, even if our renting rates are very low. College kids realize that they aren't cut out for it and don't like the blue collar work, they up and leave with hardly a word."

"Courtney Banks? She was one of these? My records show she was underage." Dean had gotten the guy to open his mouth. Hopefully, he could keep it open.

"Courtney Banks was years ago, Agent Kirke. Her employer was the only one to miss her. From all accounts, she was a troubled teen. She had run away from home. I'm guessing she ran again."

"Alfredo Benavides."

"Off the top of my head… he was an illegal. A day worker."

"Priscilla Thomson."

"That one, I don't know. Agent Kirke, really. This is a quiet town and I like to keep it that way. Don't go bothering folks about this stuff."

"Just one more… also from years ago. Hank Whitmore."

Deputy Valenti sighed but didn't look too troubled about recognizing the name. "The factory called him in. His son was too scared to go home and find out he was missing. Wherever Whitmore's gone. No one misses him."

"His son?" Dean reached into his pocket for his notebook.

"Don't. The boy has been through enough. I won't tell you how to find him. Good luck, Agent Kirke."

"Well, thank you for your cooperation." Dean turned and left the building. He shook his head when he met up with Sam. "Your hunch might be right. This town stinks of cover up. He got riled up when I mentioned the Whitmore guy and he got all…" he waved his hand around, "about the Banks girl."

"Okay… so you think he knows that they were spontaneously combusted or do you think it's something else?" Sam glanced around. There were alien depictions absolutely everywhere.

"It's too weird not to follow up on." He tapped his notebook on his brother's shoulder. "Whitmore had a son."

"Oh yeah?"

"The deputy knows him probably. Said that the kid was too scared to go home and find out his dad was missing."

"Probably beat the crap out of the kid. So?"

"It means there might be a witness. Either Whitmore beat his kid, his kid did it or his kid saw it happen. Witness."

--

It was late afternoon when Liz woke with a headache. She lay on the floor in the kitchenette. Taking some aspirin, she gulped down a glass of water. She opened a notebook and waited for the vision to enter her consciousness so she could draw it out and tell someone. She wondered how many times that had happened and she hadn't realized. It had a familiar sort of feeling about it.

--

Sam followed the row of glass cases to the office. He paused twice on the way. A picture from 1999 touted a Kyle Valenti as MVP. He hardly bore a resemblance to the guy who joked constantly and quoted Buddha at every turn. The other picture to give him pause was of the science club from 2000. Lillian was situated in the front with a bright smile. Liz, he reminded himself. He pushed open the office doors. "Excuse me, miss."

She turned and smiled brightly. "Hello. What can I get for you?"

"Some outdated information, I'm afraid. The district guy told me you keep your student records for ten years."

"In the computer we do. Hard copy is in storage and they're doing some construction." She offered him an apologetic grin and a glance down her shirt when she leaned forward.

"2000. Courtney Banks." He showed his badge quickly and waited while she turned to a computer behind her and began typing. The printer spat out three pages.

"She was a transfer student and she only attended for a semester. Sorry. That's all we have. She was a really bad student. No clubs. Sorry."

"Thank you. This will have to do. Um… could I trouble you for just… two more records."

"Um…" She started to say no but a quick glance at the doors behind her and another smile at the handsome agent, and then she turned to the back computer. She glanced over her shoulder at him. "Ready when you are."

"Elizabeth Parker. Max Evans. Class of… '02, I think."

She nearly fell out of her chair at the names but she quickly typed in the search information and printed out the files. There were several more pages of each of those files. "They aren't in any trouble, are they?"

"It's just routine investigations. In search of truth and all that."

"Well…" She bit her lip and glanced around. "I shouldn't be telling you this but those kids kicked up quite a stir while they were here. I was a few years ahead of them in school but I heard about it all."

--

Dean cursed when he saw the place. "Seriously. Dude." A UFO stuck out of the front of the building. Scoffing, he trekked into the thankfully air-conditioned restaurant. He took a seat at the counter and tried not to look around too much. He was going to retire to his car if he had to look at another alien. Then his waitress appeared in a sea-foam green snap-on uniform and antennae on her head. "Don't. Just don't. I want a coke and I want to talk to your manager or the owner or whatever."

"Mr. Parker!" The girl yelled and turned to retrieve the ordered soda.

Dean had a soda in front of him and a harried looking man rounded the counter in less than a minute. "Michelle?"

"Dude wants to see you." She snapped her gum.

"Michelle, dude." He mocked her. "What did I tell you about calling me 'dude' or yelling across the restaurant… or chewing gum on duty."

"Mr. Parker, you are so harsh." The girl walked away, spitting out her gum into a trash can on her way to the back of the restaurant. "I didn't even call you dude."

"She was talking about me, Mr. Parker." Dean held out his hand. "I just had a few questions to ask you."

"Questions?" The man gave a stiff handshake but became visibly uneasy.

"I'm Agent Kirke with—"

"Yeah, I know. Word gets around." He crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm not up for questions, today."

"I have one question right now. You can answer it or not. Then you can choose whether I get to ask another question." Dean sipped his coke and set his hands on the countertop. "Did a Courtney Banks work for you? This would have been a few years back. 2000."

"Briefly." He relaxed a bit, his peppered hair falling in his face. "She was a good worker when she showed up that summer. She stopped showing up all of a sudden before Thanksgiving of that year. We never heard a word about her. Is someone looking for her? I mean… after all this time?"

"There are just a few unsolved cases that we've been asked to look into, Mr. Parker. I'm not wild about it. I don't think we're going to solve them and I don't want to nose into anyone's business unnecessarily. I just want to do my job and go home." Dean hoped the disgruntled employee bit would work because he had a feeling his usual charms were not going to cut it in this town where the town deputy called restaurant owners to warn them of federal agents in town. "Let's just make this quick shall we? I have a list of disappeared members of Roswell." He pulled out his notepad. "Courtney Banks. Alfredo Benavides. Max Evans. Heather Esquivel. Michael Guerin. Edward Harding. Rachel Langdon. Larry Moon. Elizabeth Parker. Sarah Rodney. Priscilla Thomson. Hank Whitmore. Any of those names familiar?"

When Dean looked up, Mr. Parker was just staring at him. He seemed to shake himself and then cleared his throat. "Michael Guerin is not missing. He's working at the 7-11."

"Case solved." Dean scratched the name off the list. "Anyone else?"

"Hank Whitmore ran off in early 2000. No one's seen him. No one wants to."

Whitmore was not a liked guy, Dean thought to himself. "So, I've heard."

"Ed Harding worked for the government." The casual shrug looked too practiced but Dean didn't call attention to it. "Don't know who reported him missing. You'd think they'd look after their own."

"They don't know where I am." Dean commented in a low breath.

"Um… Elizabeth Parker isn't missing. She's away at school."

"Parker… any relation?" Dean frowned. Elizabeth Parker? There was a name that rang some bells.

"My daughter. Her mother and I have never reported her missing. I don't understand why she would be on your list of disappeared individuals."

"Weird. I'll pull that one." Dean scratched her name off. "You'd think there would be someone on top of these cases… well, I guess that's me now."

"Max Evans isn't missing." The man picked up a rag and wiped down the counter. He seemed to struggle when the words reached his lips. His tone wavered just a bit. "He um… passed away earlier this year. He'll be down the road at Roswell Memorial Cemetery." Dean scratched the name off his list and frowned at it. Elizabeth Parker? "Any other questions?"

"Um… no. I guess I've got everything I can get from you. Thank you, Mr. Parker. And for the information on those who weren't directly related to you as well."

"Jeff. I'm worried about her." A female voice intruded, suddenly. "She didn't sound like herself on the phone. She insists she won't come home but maybe we should go and get her."

"Nancy, not now." His eyes flicked back and forth from his wife to the federal agent finishing off his coke.

"Jeff. Liz is… just…"

"Not now." Jeff hushed his wife.

"Her husband is dead and she won't come home. She insists that she needs to stay in Valor Springs."

"South Dakota?" Dean blurted out and quickly realized he should have kept his mouth shut when both of them stilled.

"Yes, how did you know?" The woman turned a pair of worried blue eyes on him.

"I passed through there once or twice. Nice place." Dean tried to excuse himself but Mr. Parker was eyeing him something fierce. He laid down a large bill for his buck-forty drink. "Quiet. I wasn't aware there was a school in the area but these days everyone's doing things on the internet… I should be going. Thank you again, Mr. Parker for your cooperation. I trust I'll be able to close all these without bothering you again."

--

Sam sat at a fountain and went over the files in his hands. They said a lot about the people Max and Liz were but not a whole lot about the Sparks. He had kind of expected Lillian and Nathan to be the popular kids in school. Class sweethearts at the very least. Turns out they were both on the quiet and smart side. That secretary had told him all about the robbery as she'd heard it. Both were acquitted… but the FBI still had them up on the most wanted list. Dolores seemed to think that Max and Liz had run off and eloped because her father didn't approve of them dating. He had apparently rigged the school so that they couldn't see each other. Liz had been shipped to a girl's academy briefly but rumor had it she'd been kicked out for breaking the rules and shipped back. She didn't have anything new or surprising to add to his stockpile of information.

--

Dean gave up on the investigation. Sam hadn't gotten enough for a real hunt anyway. It seemed people were always up and leaving Roswell without goodbyes; that included his friends back in Valor Springs. He strolled his way to the Roswell Cemetery and found the headstone he was looking for in the Evans family plot. All sorts of Evans had been buried there as it turned out. This was the latest. Someone had been taking care of the plants because the flowers were only slightly wilted and the grass growing nicely over it. "I know Nathan isn't your real name but it's the one I know you by. I'm sorry, man. I tried to weaken it for you. I tried to bring him down but… he was just too strong. You got him though. I don't know if you knew that but you got him."

A breeze picked up and Dean made himself comfortable on the headstone just across the way. "Lillian is holding up all right. She misses you, man. She blames me and I think she should. I said I'd bring you back and I didn't bring you back to her the way she wanted. She… she's still getting visions but she's safe. We keep her safe when we can. Marty and Bobby and Stan all look out for her. You must have been one hell of a guy, though. Aside from our camaraderie that is. Maybe I should have listened to my instincts and been the one to go down fighting that thing. I knew you weren't ready to face anything on your own. Not even with backup right behind you. You have to hone your skills before you put them into action. Discipline. You have to know yourself and your quarry for a successful hunt."

Dean stared at the stone and fought the urge to go find something to drink. "Look. Our hunt was not a success as I see it. Usually… so long as the demon goes down, it's a win in my book but… it feels more like the one that got away, even if you did manage to kill the fucker. You're from a fucked up town, you know. The deputy was all over my case for asking questions. Maybe he was covering for you. I don't know. Yours and your wife's names were on that list. Gary's too. Maybe that's all it was. There's no demon in Roswell. No spooky spirits. Maybe you didn't believe Lillian that day when you didn't know I could hear but… at least you're not one of them.

"I gave Lillian your stuff. She's a good woman. You were lucky to have her. I hope you deserved her. She drives me up the wall so you must have had a kind of patience that doesn't exist. She makes Sammy run up our phone bill. Normally it wouldn't bother me but exceeding my monthly minutes tips the credit card company off to unusual patterns. She got Sammy feeding us all kinds of green shit and drinking fruit juice like we were five-year-olds instead of grown men. Anyway… all it says to me is that she misses you but I think she understands… She's got Bobby and Marty and all their contacts at her disposal if she'd ask and she hasn't once asked… I would've. I've thought about it. Having Dad back seems like it would be easier but… dead things should stay dead… It's just the way it should be."

Dean wiped at his face and discovered that he'd been crying a bit. "Look, man… I'm sorry. I really am. I want to change what happened that day. I'm not even supposed to be here… maybe you are. Maybe I fuck up everything I touch." He stood up and poured a handful of rock salt onto the gravestone from his pocket. "Rest in peace, Nathan."

"Dean Winchester?"

Dean spun around to the speaker, wondering if he'd be able to overpower and escape but he froze at the sight of a familiar blonde standing with a group of people he'd never seen before. "Amanda?"

"Isabel." She corrected with a slight smile. "We were just… coming to refresh his flowers." She hugged him a bit awkwardly, having never done so before. "What are you doing here?"

"We were passing through. Thought I'd pay my respects." Dean stepped back and shoved his hands into his pockets.

"Jesse Ramirez, this is Dean Winchester. Dean, my husband Jesse. My parents… Philip and Diane Evans. Dean."

"Nice to meet you." The tall lawyer held his hand out. "Michael tells us you put up a hell of a fight for my brother-in-law."

"Not hard enough." Dean nodded to them and started to move passed them. "I'll see you around, Amanda."

"Dean?" Isabel started to follow him. "Where's Sam?" He only shrugged but paused at his name. "How long are you staying?"

"I plan to be out of here by nightfall. It was a mistake to come here." His voice caught and he had to clear it and wipe at his nose, like that would cover it up. He rolled his eyes at himself. All he'd wanted was some closure like Sam had been telling him but he didn't see it coming this way. He'd gotten some things off his chest but there wasn't anyone to forgive him, so he figured it didn't really count.

"Wait… have you been to Valor Springs lately?" Isabel rushed to catch up with him. Dean gave her a once over. She definitely didn't dress the same as she had in Valor Springs. She looked like she belonged in a catalogue somewhere. "Have you seen Liz?"

"Liz?"

"Lillian." She prompted. "Is she really okay?"

"She was last time I saw her. She bitched me out. Seems like status quo for her to me." He shrugged a little. He felt bad for running away when all 'Isabel' wanted was to know if her sister-in-law was holding up okay. It was easier to reassure Nathan's ashes than to face a living member of the guy's family.

"You really rub her the wrong way." She finally laughed and smiled a smile he knew he had never seen in Valor Springs. The girl back in that hick town was a show, just like he'd always known; this was the real… Isabel Ramirez. "It was good to see you. Tell Sam I said 'hi' and if you guys do stay longer… we're at the Tumbleweed and my parents are listed."

"Alright." He nodded. "If I see her, I'll…"

"Send her our regards and concerns." The smile faded into a grimace. "She's not talking to us much… even when she does."

"I'll mention something to Sam. He'll get her to come around. Least I hope it's a two way street with those two. She makes him do all kinds of torturous things to me." Dean shook his head and felt a little more normal than he had when he'd been discovered crying at Nathan's grave. Maybe he was putting too heavy a weight on verbal forgiveness.

"Well, Liz is nothing if not influential. The girl has enough conscience for the world." Isabel offered a last wave and rejoined her family at her brother's grave.

--

Liz studied her crude drawings. She picked up the phone and dialed Sam's first. Voice mail. He really needed to get a new phone and soon. She left a quick message for him to call her if she didn't get a hold of him first. Then she called Dean's phone.

"Hello?"

"Dean?"

"Yeah."

"It's Lillian."

"Right. Sammy's not around. I'll tell him you called though."

"Actually. I just… kind of wanted to put you guys on the trail of something. It's not anything I've ever seen before. It has an… interesting flavor. There's not a lot to it right now. I have the feeling that there will be more visions to come."

"Then why not wait until it's clear?"

"Because I don't like repeating my mistakes. Maybe if I tell you about it, you'll recognize it and you'll be prepared."

"Shoot." Dean took a seat on a park bench and took out a notebook to jot things down while she spoke.

"There's a man, three women and a thing."

"Is this a limerick? I didn't take you for that kind of girl."

"I'm being serious, Dean."

"Sorry. Keep talking."

* * *

TBC


	25. Chapter 24

AN: So... this is rare. I never post on a Friday, forget Friday evening but I don't work tomorrow until late and I'm still high on personal pride at having replaced a part on my car without the aid of a mechanic... or even a man as the salesperson at the auto part store was a woman. I'll take my wins where I can get them. So, here's some story. If I'm bored enough tomorrow with my unusual day off, I may post the next part, which is an extension of this part. Enjoy!

* * *

Part 24 – A month later…

(April 28, 2009)

Liz rolled over and answered the phone. She felt like she had just fallen asleep. "Hello?"

"To whom am I speaking?" Came a female voice.

"Depends. Who are you and who are you looking for at… two in the morning?" Liz glanced at the clock and groaned. A quick glance at Kyle's bed said that he was spending yet another night with Betty Lou from the Quick N Save.

"I'm calling from Prescott Memorial in Langdon." The voice paused then cleared its throat. "Your number was the last dialed on a cell phone recovered from a victim of a car wreck. The gentleman did not have any identification, nor did his passenger, also a man. Both between 20 and 30 at a glance."

"Oh my god. I'm coming."

"Ma'am? Your name?"

"Liz. I'm coming. I'll be there in the morning." Liz jumped out of bed and got dressed. She ran the words over and over in her mind. She knew where they were. She had just talked to Sam the night before. She just had to get there. It wasn't too far. She could hitch to the bus station and catch a bus. She could be there by noon at the latest. Scribbling a note for whoever came looking for her, she tacked it to the front door and started her journey. Walking in the cool night air let her collect her thoughts a little.

The next day…

(April 29, 2009)

Liz walked into the hospital and stopped at the desk. The nurse on duty ignored her. "Excuse me." Nothing. "Pardon me." Nothing. "Nurse? Two men were brought in last night. I was called to come identify them."

"What?" The nurse finally looked at her and blinked rapidly. "Identify?"

"Two men. One is six foot four, lanky. He's got a mole on his left cheekbone. Brown eyes." Liz ran her hands through her hair. "The other is about six foot, stockier build. Green eyes. He wears a… charm around his neck." Liz tried to keep her tears from flowing but she was on the verge of losing it. "I… just came to identify the bodies. Just… tell me where to find the morgue."

"Morgue?" The nurse began flipping through a notepad next to the phone. "Are you Liz?"

"Yes."

"You're here about the Winchesters?"

"Yes." Liz gulped out.

"Ma'am. I'm sorry if someone misled you on the phone. They're fine." The nurse walked around the desk. "Both men were unconscious when they came in but they came around this morning. I'll take you to their room."

"Wait…" She took a breath to calm herself and make sure she'd heard what she thought she'd heard. "They're okay?"

"Banged up but very much alive."

Liz followed the nurse down the hallway to the room where both men were lounging and eyeing the window as if they knew exactly how to get it open and escape, if not for Sam's leg in traction and Dean's arm encased from his fingers up to his armpit in gauze. Both looked worse for wear but a sore sight for Liz's eyes after the tumultuous thoughts on her night's journey. "There they are." She breathed out, catching their attention. She stared at them through watering eyes for a long moment. "I'll kill you both for making me think you were dead."

"Whoa." Dean held up his hands. "Why are you here?"

"Why am I here? Why are you here?" Liz advanced on his bed. "I got a call in the middle of the night saying I had to come identify two men who were in some kind of car wreck. They told me to come because I was last dialed on your phone."

"The car flipped over a few times. We're fine." Sam tried to intercede.

"Way to look after your little brother, Dean." Liz whapped his good arm.

"Ow." Dean tried to duck but she had him trapped. "Who said I was driving?"

"It's your car." She whapped him again. "Of course you were driving. Were you drinking, too?"

"No!" Dean shouted back.

Liz gave up, tears slipping from her face as she sank into the chair by his bed. "They called me and I was thinking on the bus ride that I'd have to…" She sobbed suddenly. All the emotions from the long bus ride and all the relief to see two confused faces just poured out. She took the Kleenex when the nurse handed them over. Liz hit Dean's leg with the box. "Don't ever do that to me. Both of you. If someone has to come identify a body, make sure they call someone else. I don't want to be the one to take your ashes home."

"Excuse me." The nurse spoke up. "Should I bring the paperwork later on? For Mrs. Winchester to fill out?"

"Yes." Sam blurted out before Dean could protest that Liz was not either of their wives. "Thank you for bringing her in."

It took several long moments before Liz could calm down enough to speak. "After all the hours of building my courage to look at your dead bodies, it's a great relief to see that neither of you are dead." She took a breath and forced her mind to anything that would prevent more tears. "Is the Impala drivable?"

"Don't know yet." Dean shrugged but handed Liz the box of Kleenex. "Mrs. Winchester?"

"I didn't say anything. She just assumed." Liz waved him off. "Are you guys really okay?"

"We're fine. I wouldn't let Dean leave me behind." Sam offered her a smile. "He can walk out AMA if he wants to. I have my leg in a complicated system of pulleys though."

"With two good hands, I could get him out." Dean motioned to his right hand in the sling.

"What in the hell happened to you guys?" Liz sniffed loudly and reached for another tissue to clean up with.

"Yellow-eyed Demon. We got close again, thanks to yours and Sam's visions. Hopefully he doesn't know about you." Dean shrugged and scowled. That's all they needed. Liz's visions had helped a lot but if the Demon got wind of her, she was good as dead.

"Okay. I'll figure some way to get you guys out of here and then you'll both recover somewhere with a gazillion protection circles, okay?" Liz stood and ran her hands through her hair. "I'll fake some paper work and ask about the traction… transportation and wherever they towed the car."

"Do the car first." Dean advised. When she turned to glare at him, he motioned her away from the door. "The glove box. There's a box where I keep IDs. There should be a decent Winchester badge. Just make sure the name on a card in the trunk, matches one of the badges. There's a system. We know how to work it. Okay? If you get stuck, just bring me the cards and the badges. I'll do it."

"I'm sure I can figure it out." Liz grabbed the door handle. "If you can defraud the credit card companies, I can too."

--

Liz put down her own cash for the car and was grateful when it was drivable. It made a few funny sounds but she got it back to the hospital and found all the documents needed to cheat the hospital and credit card companies out of what the Winchesters owed them. She felt bad doing it but Demon hunting was a thankless and benefit-less job, and she would know from her experience alien-hunting. She faked grimaces and grateful smiles for the nurses and doctors as she negotiated for the release of her friends.

Sam was released first. His leg was fractured and his cast was dry. Dean had to have his wounds irrigated again and rebandaged before the doctor would allow him to leave, even under threat of a mad dash for the parking lot. Liz had to threaten to help the doctor keep him in order to get him just to sit down and wait for the much needed bandage change. Liz wheeled Sam out to the car and was not totally surprised at the gasp of horror. "Dean's going to punch someone."

"Rolled a few times, huh. Windows are missing. Broken, I guess." Liz eased open the backseat door. "I'm sure you can salvage a few more parts from the old Impala."

"If Bobby hasn't stripped it already." Sam slid into the seat, cleaned off broken glass.

"Bobby doesn't dare touch that thing. When he passes it on the lot he gets this expre—"

"Mother-fucker!" Dean exclaimed when he hit the parking lot.

"It's okay. It drives." Liz turned with a wince. "You should have known it would be like this."

"Look at it. I just got it running good again!" Dean wanted to punch someone but his right arm was in bandages that hurt when he moved his arm even a fraction.

"Just… close your eyes and get in. I'm driving."

"The hell you are."

"And you're going to work the gear shift with your left hand?" Liz shook her head. "I got it here. I'll get it to Bobby's so you can fix it up."

"Whatever. If you're driving. I'm sleeping." Dean sat in the passenger seat and waited until Liz had made sure that Sam was comfortable. She started the car and it let loose a whine before it settled into a chunky purr. "Son of a bitch. We'll be lucky if it makes it to Bobby's."

"I can drive. It's fine." Liz pulled onto the highway and felt Dean watching her every move.

"Watch the gauges. It even looks like it's going to overheat and you pull it over. I'm not blowing a gasket head." Dean leaned over to see the gauges. "Don't push her too fast. If she overheats, we're stranded."

Liz bit her tongue and kept driving but he was practically in her lap. "Do you mind? I like my space."

"Are the gauges even working?" he leaned even further into her personal space.

"You know what?" Liz pulled the car onto the gravel and turned to him. "You drive. I'll work the gearshift for you to get into drive and then I'm sleeping. I've been up since two in the morning and I didn't get a whole lot of sleep before that."

"Fine." Dean got out of the car and cursed at its appearance all the way around the car.

"Fine." Liz settled into the passenger seat then leaned in to help Dean get the car out of park and on the road again. Once that was done, she leaned over the seat so she could see Sam. Sam was laughing silently but he looked to be in pain. "You okay?"

"Tired… need some of this… stuff. I'll be fine." Sam shook his head and the bottle of painkillers. "Think we'll get there by morning?"

"At this speed?" Liz looked to Dean as she fished a bottle of water from her purse. "By tomorrow afternoon."

"We're not going to push her when she's like this. She'll strand us and we'll have to eat each other for food. We're not going down like that plane in the Andes." Dean over-dramatized as he pat the dashboard. "We should really give her a good looking over before we make the trip but I don't trust these out of the way towns after what happened in that orchard."

"Ah… the orchard. Burketsville." Sam nodded that he remembered. "Your face wouldn't have improved that scarecrow one bit. Had to torch the sucker."

"I still maintain that I would have gotten us out of there without you." Dean talked to his brother through the rearview.

"If I hadn't come along, you'd be pushing up apple trees." Sam shot back.

"I should have left you to the cannibals."

"Maybe the Wendigo should have had you for a snack."

"The Striga."

"Phantom truck."

"Psycho painting girl wanted to give you a close shave."

The boys fell silent for a while but Liz knew there were demons and spirits that they weren't voicing. They were bantering, not fighting. Other demons and spirits were saved for fighting, ammunition for when they were in close quarters for far too long… Sam winked at Liz. "Did you know that Dean has a way with kids?"

"What?" Liz turned slightly so she could see both of them at the same time. Dean rolled his eyes and set his jaw. The idea was bizarre and so she let out a chuckle. "Really?"

"Every time there's a little kid involved… boom. Dean takes care of it."

"Shut up, Sammy." Dean warned. His precious tough guy reputation was being tainted.

"No, seriously. When I first saw it, I thought he'd had a stroke or something." Sam adjusted himself better to tell the stories. "This kid's whole family was going to get killed by this spirit in a lake. The kid, too. Dean not only gets this kid with severe post-traumatic stress to communicate with someone for the first time since his dad died, but he saves the kid's life when the spirit tried to drown him."

"Oh my god." Liz gasped.

"Then, the kid looks at Dean like he's a hero. Laughing and talking and the whole bit. Like he was normal again." Sam didn't stop even though his brother was shooting him daggers through the mirror. "When we were hunting the Striga… It targets this little boy, whose little brother had already been attacked. Dean just…"

"Shut your cake hole, Sam." Dean bit out.

"Makes him feel better about having responsibility for his little brother. Makes him feel better about being strong for his mom. Then he convinces the kid to lie as bait."

"You did what?!" Liz smacked Dean's arm and gasped as the car swerved, Dean wincing in pain. "I am so sorry, Dean. I forgot, I'm sorry."

"He saved us all from the Striga." Sam quickly amended, peering forward to get a look at the expression on his brother's face. It was one of agony. "You okay?"

"Fine." Dean bit out.

Liz sat up and examined the bandages she had struck. "I'll do some better bandaging when we get to Bobby's."

"I'm fine." Dean repeated, his teeth clenched together.

"Sam, maybe you could give him like half a pain pill."

"I'm fine. I don't need drugs."

"Okay." Liz bit her lip, glancing at him guiltily. "Tell me about this… Striga. What was it exactly?"

"A witch." Dean shrugged, turning his face to the driver's side window area as he had no window to speak of.

"A witch?" She asked, her expression dubious.

"A crone."

"A crone?" She let out a small laugh.

She was driving him up the wall and they hadn't even cleared the county yet. The next seven hours were going to be hell… if the car would move that fast without protesting. "Do you want to know or not?"

"Yes… I'll be quiet. I promise. Tell me." Liz readjusted herself in the seat so she could watch Dean tell the story while he drove, his arm cradled against his chest as if he were afraid she'd hit him again, even though he'd abandoned the sling first thing in the car.

"This Striga is centuries old. It ritually feeds on children's life energy. They present like the flu or something. It feeds on bloodlines, usually starting with the youngest and systematically getting them all to the oldest. It leaves its markers. Sulfur handprints on window sills, unexplained and seemingly incurable sickness." Dean's jaw set. He had hated Dad for saddling him with so much responsibility but he knew that had he been appreciative and obedient, that thing would have died years before Dean would have had to put it in his crosshairs. "It wasn't the first time I'd run into one of these things… so… Dad trusted that I would be the one to kill it before it killed any more children. So we were staying at this motel, pretending to be working with the CDC… the owner's little boy gets sick and I put it together pretty quickly. Striga. Sam and I fought over this one but I knew how to kill it. It's only vulnerable when it feeds. We needed to catch it in the act and… the owner's older son was the next likely target. We could have just waited until it attacked but… I wanted to give the kid an option."

"And he said he'd do it." Liz whispered in awe. She often wondered at Max and Isabel's bond, being an only child. Sam and Dean seemed to be similarly close and to hear about some little boy risking his life to save his baby brother, she wanted to cry. "To save his little brother."

"Yeah." Dean's eyes flicked to her for a second but he set them back on the road. "Anyway. He agrees to be bait. We're waiting in the next room. Waiting. When he started screaming, we had to run in there but… the first shot missed. He did what I told him and hid under the bed. There was a scuffle and it went after Sam." He clenched his teeth together for a second before he continued. "I… was scared because the last time the Striga went after Sam, it nearly got him and I was too afraid to shoot it in case I shot him. I had to wait until it was vulnerable, though. I had to make sure it died."

"To save your little brother."

"Yeah, well… that's what big brothers do. So, I shot it in the head. It died. All the kids who hadn't died got better. End of story." He felt her eyes on him. "What?"

"Nothing. I still felt kind of bad cheating the credit card company and the hospital but… I don't feel so guilty about it now."

"Oh, spare me." He rolled his eyes at her.

"You saved a bunch of kids. Even if that's a one time deal… It's a thankless job, is what I'm getting at. The government wouldn't compensate you for doing it. You guys probably get into more trouble than is warranted because you're saving lives."

"Dean's on the FBI's most wanted." Sam snickered.

"Yeah, I am… You're not, though. You're harmless… like a puppy dog or a kitty cat." He taunted his little brother, who scowled at having someone else know what little acclaim he was getting as the Winchester's youngest member. Only in his family would NOT being on the FBI's most wanted list look like a disappointment.

"How do you know that?" Liz whispered.

"It's on their website… I'm more wanted than Nathan and Gary." Dean shrugged.

"Because you're a habitual law breaker." Sam pointed out. "Lillian was the gunman on a heist. One time deal."

"Is that what it says?" Liz frowned. Then she shut her eyes and put her hand to her forehead. "I hope my grandma doesn't know how to find that website."

"Have you been home at all?" Sam had to ask. He still hadn't told her he'd followed a lead to Roswell. She didn't ever want to talk about home, not even with him.

"No. Mom wants me to come for Christmas but… I don't know." She shrugged. "She sends me stuff in the mail. She even uses my alias."

"Why do you still use it?"

"I'm just used to it. I answer to both. Stan and I don't use them in the cottage anymore. His real name is Kyle by the way." She sighed heavily and sank low in her seat. "He should really visit his dad."

"What about your dad?" Dean asked, prompting her to tell more about herself. He had met the guy but he still didn't know the whole story and he wasn't going to tell her that they'd been to Roswell if Sam hadn't.

"Dad sometimes takes the phone when I talk to Mom. He doesn't say it but he wants me to come home. Maybe to go to college or take over the restaurant but… I can't go back there. Never again. I can't be in the restaurant where Max… where he used to come visit me on shift. I can't sleep in the room where Max stopped being my friend and where I had a vision of my friends and myself dying. I couldn't go out onto the balcony where he kissed me for the first time then proposed three years later. I just… I can't. There's too much good and bad there." Liz sniffed and looked up at the roof of the car. "It's just too hard. Waking up every day without him is hard enough. Seeing my mother-in-law at the grocery store and knowing that she… isn't really my mother-in-law anymore is just…"

"No brothers or sisters?"

"Only child." She smiled to herself. "But Maria and Isabel are like my sisters. Michael and Kyle are like my brothers. You kind of make your own family when you don't have your own. You guys are lucky to have each other… when… you know, you aren't letting each other get beat on by evil spirits and demons."

"You look beat. Get some sleep." Dean ordered her. "You shouldn't have come. We would have gotten out of there eventually."

"Couldn't let my friends get buried in some unmarked grave as John Does." Liz shot Sam a smile. "I would have asked Bobby where your hometown was and I would have taken you home."

"I'll write notes and sew them into our clothes before a hunt." Sam promised. "Bobby will identify the bodies and you can bury us in Lawrence, Kansas."

Liz blinked at him. They drove all over the place. All over the state for her errands, up and down the Midwest on their own hunts. She had seen Lawrence on the map more than a handful of times when planning routes or gauging their trips when Sam called her for one of their late night talks. "You guys just cruise past your hometown all the time and never go back?"

"We've been back once or twice since we were kids." Dean cleared his throat. "It's not home."

"Then what is?" Liz asked softly, getting comfortable to sleep again.

Dean turned a full-fledged smile on her. "You're riding in it."

* * *

TBC 


	26. Chapter 25

Part 25 – Second leg of the drive…

Liz woke sometime later but from the placement of the sun in the sky, it hadn't been as long as she knew she needed. She reached back to cover Sam better with his jacket. It was just her and Dean for company. She hadn't been so close to him without something to say or something to offer itself up for conversation. Then the radio started to cut out. His gaze kept flicking to her legs. She shifted uncomfortably. "What?"

"There's no radio between here and Rutherford." He nodded to her but she just shook her head, not understanding. "There's some music in a box under there somewhere."

She had to reach down and around until she found the box under the seat, nearly wedged in. She let out a bark of a laugh before she caught herself. "Okay… Dean… how old are you, again?"

"30." He cursed under his breath. That look was familiar. He'd seen it before. "So what?"

"Okay… I'm aware that you spent most of your life under a metaphorical rock but even I had CDs when you would have been in high school." She held up a cassette tape.

"But as you can see, my car is not equipped with a CD player." He leaned over to peer into the box. "Got a bad arm. Pick something out, would you?"

Liz lifted her eyebrows as she glanced over his collection. "AC/DC, BOC?" She frowned at him but continued to look over the tapes. "Led Zeppelin, Metallica… Bad Company… Motorhead… Do you have anything written after my birth?"

"There's some newer Metallica in there." He grinned at her. "Might be some Journey or Foreigner in there. I hear you girls like that stuff."

"How about we let the music be a last resort?" She placed the box on the floor once more. "I'm really about classic rocked out."

"A last resort?" He frowned at her. "To what?"

"Conversation." She turned the knob to silence the static pouring out of the speakers. "I can count on one hand the number of talks you and I have had."

"About what? We don't have anything in common."

Liz shook her head at him. She stared ahead as she thought over possible conversation starters. Taking a deep breath, she thought over what little she did know about the guys in the car. "Okay… I know Sam had a long term relationship… what about you? Do you or did you ever have someone you were in love with?"

He let out a long breath. "You don't start easy, do you?" He could almost laugh. "Maybe once I almost."

"Almost?"

It still stung a little to think on. Cassie and her smile and her total lack of tolerance for his bullshit. "There was a girl I met when I was on a hunt with my dad. For two weeks we just… I don't know." He shook his head. It was one of the hardest things he'd had to deal with from an emotional standpoint as an adult. "I told her the truth about what I did and she…"

"She didn't believe you." Liz whispered. She had believed Sam when he had let her into the secret. She understood but she had experienced some pretty weird things in her life. Her heart went out to him.

"I did her a favor a while back, proving that I wasn't crazy and we still kind of sparked but…" He snapped his fingers together and winced because it pulled at a stitch on the back of his hand. "I think it would have always been there, between us."

"Yeah." She nodded, wanting to offer him some comfort but knowing his arm was probably still throbbing from when she'd accidentally smacked him. "Maybe she wasn't the one for you."

"Too late to know now." He shrugged. He had closed off that chapter the last time he'd seen her. Somewhere in his head, it had been over even if he didn't know it. At least she had said the words when he was willing to hold out some hope. She was right. It would have never worked.

"So what? You give up?"

"It's not like I've been trying to have a meaningful relationship…. There's no time. I couldn't do that to someone I just met."

"But you can have one-night stand after another until your dick falls off."

"There's a plan I can get behind. I hope I'm dead before it falls off though." He thought it over. "Hope it has a good reason to fall off. I've been very kind to it."

"Are we seriously treating it as if it were capable of independent living?"

"You saying Nathan was always a prince and never ruled by his prick?" He challenged with a scoff and a roll of his eyes.

"My husband could control himself."

"Oh yeah? Then why were you…" He trailed off as he turned his head to face her once more. She wasn't playing anymore and he couldn't finish the sentence. He put the pieces together. The pain in her face, her averted eyes. "Never mind. You knew him better than I did."

"No. You're right. He was a romantic but sometimes he could be a guy and be ruled by his penis." She examined her nails and worded her sentence carefully. "There were times, when we were not dating and mistakes were made, by us both, and then things came up. Things happened."

"His headstone says he was a loving father…"

"He was. He had a son from another person that he gave up for adoption when he realized how dangerous his life would be for a child…" She stared at him, the question in her eyes even if she didn't voice it.

Dean didn't explain how he knew what was on 'Max Evans's' tombstone. "What happened to his... fling? Is that the one you threw against a wall?"

"Yeah… and she's dead." Liz reached down and grabbed the first tape she could find. She shoved it in and hit play. Music blasted loud enough to wake Sam.

"Dean… are you trying to kill Lillian?" Sam groaned. "With heavy metal?" He pulled himself into a sitting position in time to see Liz curling up against the door. "Lillian?"

"She's tired, Sam." Dean popped the tape out and flipped it over, even though his arm protested. "She gets to pick her sleeping music."

"Oh."

"BTO's not bad for driving either." Dean hammed it up, despite his screaming nerve endings in his sore, cut and beaten arm.

"God." Sam groaned as he settled back into his seat. "Every single time…"

"'I think that any love is good loving… So I took what I could get. Hmmm. Oohh. Ooh. She looked at me with big brown eyes and said.'" Dean thumped on the steering wheel. "'You ain't seen nothing yet, b-b-b-b-baby!"

Liz listened for a bit. It was hard to stay sad when Dean was clearly losing his mind and approaching what looked and sounded like a good time. Maybe it had started as a cover for the turn in conversation. Maybe it had started as an apology for bringing her down but she could hear that he was actually having fun. She turned and rolled her eyes at him. He gestured for her to try it. "Seriously? This song is so bad. You always think about sex."

"Oh come on. Have some fun." Dean shook his head and turned the music up a notch. "It's not talking about sex. It's talking about how 'Any love is good love, so I took what I could get, yes I took what I could get and then she looked at me with them big brown eyes and said…'"

"'You ain't seen nothing yet… B-b-Baby.'" She managed a laugh at his grin of satisfaction.

"'You ain't seen n-n-nothing yet… baby!'"

"God… now there's two of them" Sam pulled his jacket over his head.

Third leg of the drive…

Rain had started to fall. They were warm enough inside the car but without the windows, some of the rain fell inside the car too. It meant scooting a little away from the door to avoid getting too wet. Liz started to pop in a tape after they had taken a rest stop in a nice well lit town where Dean could keep an eye on his precious beat-up baby but Dean stopped her. "What?"

"Put it in on the other side."

She just nodded and flipped the tape over to the other side. She followed instruction while he told her to rewind and forward and play. The song that flowed out of the speakers was slow and surprisingly very good. She smiled sadly and sank into her seat. "Story of my life."

"Mine, too." Dean nodded to himself. "Maybe that's why I listen to this stuff so much. Some of it is fun and helps pass the time on the road… then there's this stuff that just makes me think… and remember."

"Like what?"

"Mom used to sing me a song to… you know… put me to bed." He cleared his throat. He was 30 and he was waxing nostalgic over a lullaby.

"Why are you blushing? You were little. It's not like I know for a fact that she was tucking you in at age 13 or something." She waited until he glanced her way. "I think it's sweet that you love her so much. That you had the chance to… Sam doesn't… does he?"

"I don't know that he doesn't love her. She was his mother but… no, he doesn't remember her. She saved our lives after she died. When she went, I felt this…"

When he trailed off and let the song switch on to the next, Liz let it drop. It was obviously confusing and very painful. "Do you believe in Destiny?"

"I don't know." He cleared his throat and his mind of painful thoughts. "Maybe people are born to a purpose… but I don't think events are set in stone." A flick of his head toward the backseat where Sam was once again sleeping off his painkillers and then a nod to her. "You and Sammy are proof enough of that. Sammy doesn't always save the people in his visions but it never goes down the way he sees it once we get going, you know. Just him knowing, changes the outcome… at least a little."

"But some things you can't change." She whispered.

"You can't control the world, you know."

"I guess not. I just don't want to feel that it is not possible." She stared straight ahead at the road disappearing out of her view under the car again and again. "I hate destiny."

"Join the club, sister." He let the silence between them fill with the radio for a long while. "Why'd you come to get us?"

"I told you… I didn't even think. I thought you were dead and…" She leaned back and turned her eyes to the roof of the car. "If I get killed suddenly and they have to call someone for me… I don't carry ID anymore. I never carry my phone… unless Stan is with me, I'll end up a Jane Doe somewhere." She tilted her head to look at him. "They didn't have ID on you when they called me… you might have ended up John and Jake Doe or something. No one would know that you'd want to be salted and cremated. They called me, so I went." She stared at his profile. "Why do you salt the graves?"

"I don't know exactly. Dad figured it out early on and so I do it. Near as I can figure from what I study… which by the way, is always vague and written so poetically as to be bordering on ridiculous…" He rolled his eyes, he hated research. "Salt is the most pure substance on the Earth. We use it pretty much the way it forms. Unprocessed and still viable. Fire is nature's cleanser. Farmers raze their fields so that the new crop will grow better than the last crop. Combine the two and it's a very potent means of detaching a spirit from its earthly body. Usually the spirit clings to the body, haunting the same town, some place of significance for it. The spirit has to cross over and… a purified cleansing sends them out of this world."

"I guess that makes sense." She mulled it over for a bit. "Why do the spirits stay behind?"

"In most cases, the person dies a violent death, indicative of evil. It leaves a spiritual fingerprint. Something that can pull the spirit back; the stronger the evil, the stronger the pull. Most times years will pass. It's usually an anniversary or a sudden change of events before the spirit starts acting up. A poltergeist is a really confused and angry son of a bitch. Driven mad by staying behind or a change of owners in a house or the sale of a prized possession. Part of the madness lets them tap into the psychic energy of the living, allowing them to…"

"Do things like trap a potentially powerful psychic under a car." Liz finished, thinking of Kyle's run-in at Bobby's garage.

"Right."

"Do we attract the spirits?" She asked, motioning to herself and to Sam in the backseat.

"I'd say that is a safe bet. My dad had a psychic friend. She would probably tell it better or know more specifics about it… Our old house was haunted by a poltergeist who originated someplace else but… because what happened to my mom was so… Evil… it camped out. When a new family moved in, it showed itself. My mom didn't cross over until 23 years after her death."

"Oh." She blinked, remembering how he'd shied away from the subject just a bit earlier. "How do you know that's when she…"

"Sam and I saw her spirit when we were trying to get rid of the poltergeist for the new owner." In his mind's eye, he could see her. The fire cleared and he could see his mother and the way she looked at him. Recognizing him after 23 years… after death.

"You saw her?" Liz whispered in awe.

"Yeah." He furrowed his brow. "She looked… just the way she did the night she died… like she was just about to tuck me into bed." He cleared his throat and straightened in his seat. "I was barely four, by the way."

"Yeah, I know. Sam told me that part of the story." She carefully touched his wrist, the only unbandaged part of his arm. "He told me how you carried him out of the house even though you were only four. A weaker child might have dropped his six-month-old brother. A less obedient child might have refused at all."

"Yeah…" His eyes flicked momentarily to her hand on his. He shrugged as if it was nothing. "Well, I guess I've always been what my dad needed me to be."

"That's not a bad thing. I spent my whole life trying to please my parents. And they were for the most part. In the end, it was me that needed to be happy."

"I don't know how to do that."

"Sure you do. You were happy once. I saw a picture at Bobby's."

"Bobby has a picture of me?"

"One of you, your dad and Sam… and the car. When you were young. You had a huge smile on your face."

Dean remembered the picture. There were a few copies of that one floating around. "I was ten," he scoffed, "I hadn't killed anything yet."

"Killing someone doesn't take away your ability to be happy."

"Speaking from experience?" He shook his head at her, his eyes still on the road. "Who did you kill?"

"My best friends." Liz reached down for the box of tapes to read the names to herself. "When I was 17… I had a… chance to change the future and I did… change it. So that the people I cared about wouldn't die when we were 32." She bit her lip as she thought of Alex. "I cheated my best friend out of 15 years of his life. Alex and Maria and I… we were inseparable since the third grade and I… went changing things and he died."

"Did you kill him yourself?" Dean pressed, his intense green eyes set on her face, driving with his peripheral. "Stab him? Shoot him? Poison him?"

"No but—"

"Then it doesn't count. You aren't responsible for his death unless you were face to face with him when he died. You didn't kill him." He turned his gaze back to the road. "I'm guessing you didn't kill the other friends either… you said Friends. Plural."

"Even if I knew what would happen before it did?"

"No. You didn't set a trap for them to get killed. You didn't plan it. It just happened… that's life. People die without knowing what's coming. People die knowing what's coming. People… die." Dean wanted to take it back. That's not the way he really felt about it. Nathan's death still felt like his fault. He was about to retract the statement when she spoke.

"Thanks for saying that. I need to hear it every few years so I don't drive myself crazy with guilt."

"Your welcome." He shrugged and cleared his throat. He nodded to the tape deck. "Turn it down. You're going to learn Mom's lullaby."

"Why?"

"Cause…" he shrugged. He didn't know why he was doing it. It was something to do. "Someday you're gonna have kids and you need one decent lullaby. 'Rock a bye baby' will kill the kid's brain cells while they're still forming. Girls, do whatever you want to them but if you have a boy someday. He will need a nice decent lullaby like this or… lots and lots of Led Zeppelin."

* * *

TBC

So.. the song bit... cheesy. I was gonna write one for him but... that didn't pan out so... probably no one will ever 'hear' the Winchester lullaby. It'll just drive people nuts... which is all a part of my plan... MUWAHAHAHAHAHA. Anyway, I had to post this part cause it's part of the last part which was entirely too long for my liking but roadtrips are like that. I did come up with a brilliant plot twist, yes another, but I don't where I'm gonna put it so if for some reason I hit part 30 and just... don't post as much... I'm rewriting some stuff. I'm currently working on part 51... or still working on it... I haven't been in a writing mood. Anyway, scrambled brains are going to attempt to do all the posting, get some chores in before work. Thanks to all y'all who are reading. I appreciate it.


	27. Chapter 26

Part 26 – The next day…

(April 30, 2009)

"You guys…" Liz shook her head. She skirted around tables putting down orders. She was a little irate when she finally got the chance to look over her friends. "You were just in a car accident. You should be in your room, resting."

Dean slid a chair underneath Sam's cast and pulled his wallet out with his left hand. "Fine but we'd starve."

"And you!" She circled the table to look over Sam. "You have a broken leg."

"No… I have a fractured leg. Elevate it and it'll be fine." Sam pointed to the chair under his leg.

"No beer. You're on painkillers." She turned to Dean. "You either." He stared at her aghast. "That's right. I said it. You're still clotting and if you want to bleed to death, fine. Have a beer but I won't serve it to you."

"Bring us food, Lillian. Please?" Sam begged.

"Fine. Then it's back to bed for both of you." She left them to themselves while she put in an order for them and served the rest of her tables. Sam watched his brother watch the wall. He shook his head and thanked Liz when their food arrived. Liz gave them a stern warning to eat all their food and she'd reward them afterward.

"We're not five!" Dean called after her.

"Then stop acting like it." She called back.

"Dean, what is with you?" Sam laughed and poured ketchup on both their plates for their fries.

"I don't know how you can stand her. I mean, seriously. She yapped all the way from Langdon. The only peace I got was when she slept for like… two minutes but you were passed out, too." Dean jabbed a fry into the ketchup and nearly missed his mouth when he attempted to eat. He already missed his right hand.

Sam blinked at his brother. "Every time I woke up, you guys were getting along. So what's the deal today? Why are you being a jerk?"

"I am being a jerk." Dean admitted as he ate awkwardly with his left hand. He knew why he was being a jerk. She looked at him with those big brown eyes and he had to answer all her questions. She hadn't been playing him. She was just curious. "She got me talking is all."

"And so you're being an ass?" Sam led his brother in the direction he needed to go. It was downright hilarious. Usually it was Dean who was playful and Liz who was bitchy but the tables had turned somewhere on the ride from Langdon.

"So, I had some fun and… maybe I said some things to her that I only tell you… or… never tell you…" He trailed off. "Maybe she got me thinking."

"About?" He let the obvious joke go to see what was wrong with his brother.

"I'm 30… Dude, you don't just… make friends when you're 30. She doesn't want to be the one they call to come identify our mangled bodies… and I don't want to be standing there over her grave if she goes first." Dean finally admitted. "I stopped in to see Nathan while we were in Roswell. I… I don't want to have to do that again."

"Okay. I understand." Sam nodded to his plate. As outgoing a person as Dean was, the guy could be socially inept. "But you know… you're right. People don't really just make friends outside of high school or college or work… those are the people you get stuck with. If you can make a friend… maybe you should keep him or her… One of these days, we're both gonna get locked up and we're going to have to call someone and… if we don't have friends that we can trust to do things like that…"

"Maybe. I don't know. She still shouldn't treat us like we're five."

"Dude, what did you tell her?" Sam scoffed as he dug into his food. As funny as it had been, it was very quickly getting old.

"Dude, I swear." Dean bit out around his hamburger. He drank his soda like a good boy but he was dying for a beer. "I wasn't going to say anything but she started talking and understanding and asking questions and I was giving her everything but my high school gym locker combo."

"She can do that." Sam laughed and had to hide it when she stopped by to check on them. "And she never forgets."

"I figured that." He gulped his soda and wished it would just turn to a jack and coke. "If they want to find fucking Osama or what's his face, they should just have her start interrogating the… the… the…"

"Taliban." He had to laugh at his clueless brother.

"Those are the guys. She'll start talking and then they'll be giving her everything. Every blueprint of every fucking cave. It might keep the FBI busy and off our… my ass." Dean amended at the end. The FBI weren't going after Sam yet.

"Okay, boys. I got you two brownies made by one Miss Yvette Milner." Liz set the freshly warmed hunks in front of them. She leaned in to whisper not so softly to Dean. "She said she made them for you but she guessed that maybe Sam could have one too. She seems to have an awfully big crush on her personal hero."

Sam let out a loud belly laugh and wiped away tears of joy. "Oh God… I just knew it. One day you were totally going to get hero-worshipped… I just never figured brownies into the deal."

"Shut up." Dean growled but he ate his brownie with a self-satisfied smile. "So… I get notoriety and brownies… What does Sam get?"

"Sam…" Liz moved around to wrap her arms around him. "Gets the girls over eighteen." She kissed Sam's cheek and bounded away to see to her tables.

--

"How did all this happen?" Liz asked as she unwound the bandages so Dean could wash up.

"Most of it happened before the car flipped." He shrugged. "Yellow-eyed Demon wanted to torture me a bit. I probably wasn't in any condition to drive to begin with. Narrow escapes are my specialty." He flashed her a smile. "I must have really pissed him off to want me dead so badly when he's repeatedly made it a point to tell me how worthless I am."

"The Demon tells you that you're worthless." She started to snicker until she realized that he was dead serious.

"Repeatedly." That had always bothered him. When the Demon had been inside his father, making his father tell him that he was unworthy of being with his family.

"You must really scare him then." She tossed the gauze away. "Take your shower but try not to get the arm too wet. Those stitches have to stay some semblance of dry before they can be taken out."

"Whatever." Dean mumbled.

Liz busied herself fluffing Sam's pillows and setting things within his reach. He shook his head at her. "You don't need to take care of us. We've been doing this a long time."

"You didn't used to have anyone to do this stuff for you." Liz shrugged as she debated on how much to tell him about what she'd realized over the last two days. "Now you do." She felt his eyes on her and it took her a minute to admit why she was hanging around. "It's felt really good to be around people who need me. I went home last night to sleep and I felt… really alone. Stan has Betty Lou. He's always with her and he doesn't even need me to cook for him."

"Liz?"

"From the moment I got that phone call, to the moment when I walked into my house last night… I'd forgotten… for a little bit that I was alone. I'm sure I knew somewhere in my head but… I was busy. I wasn't feeling sorry for myself. I had other people to worry about."

"I guess I know what you mean. A distraction can be good for a while… to get you through the bad parts." Sam let out a dry laugh. "Hunting got me through some pretty bad patches. That and being mad at my dad."

She studied her hands for a long minute or two. "You guys aren't staying, are you? I mean… I know you're not staying in Valor Springs forever but..." She took a deep breath. "As soon as Dean gets windows in the Impala and it's running well…"

"Yeah. In a few days, I'll be able to hobble around on this cast. Dean will be using that arm, pain or not… I won't be good for hunting but I can do research. He'd probably prefer it that way."

"Because you're his brother and he wants to keep you safe."

"Something like that."

Two days later…

(May 2, 2009)

Dean showed off his scars to Marty. Bobby had pulled the stitches out against Liz's advice. He waved the grimaces off the older man. "It was nothing. I heal pretty fast."

"Those are going to be ugly." Marty straightened to wipe down the bar.

"Come on. Ladies dig scars."

"Maybe." Liz shrugged but she pointed to Marty's arm. "Then they turn into this." The scar that disfigured the man's forearm looked frightening. "Maybe you'll luck out and it'll start to fade before it gets dark and scary."

"What would you suggest?"

"I was hoping you'd ask." Liz reached into her pocket and pulled out a small jar of cream. "Diminishes scars. But… only put it on after they've fully closed. If you put it on before… you might get it infected."

"Yes, mother." Dean frowned at the jar she'd placed before him. "This is makeup."

"No, it's not."

"Yeah, it is." He turned the jar to show her the label that distinctly bore the name of a cosmetics line.

"Put it on."

"It's makeup."

"It'll keep the girls from looking at your gnarled skin and wondering what leprous disease you've contracted and possibly be passing on to them if they let you take them back to whatever hovel you're using to lure in the unsuspecting victims."

"Victims?"

"Yes. Victims."

Dean looked up when his brother hobbled into the bar. "Sammy! Birthday boy!"

"It's your birthday?" Liz tilted her head at him.

"Yeah, well… that's what my driver's license says." Sam shrugged and took a low seat so he could prop up his leg. He tried to avoid eye contact but he knew, just knew, she was going to make a big deal out of it. "Winchesters aren't big on celebrating."

"I'm an Evans… and we celebrate the hell out of everything." Liz didn't even catch her mistake when Marty did a double-take.

Dean just shook his head at Marty and motioned for him not to say anything. Liz returned from the kitchen with a plate of food for Sam, then she took Dean's beer to give to Sam. "Hey!"

"What? You have to be sober enough to take the birthday boy home. You can't keep drinking." Liz bounded away again. When she returned half an hour later, she had a freshly baked cupcake with a candle.

"Lillian." Marty held out an envelope. "Mary's still sending your mail here."

"I'll talk to her. Promise." Liz took the envelope and sat with her only table of the afternoon left. It was a short letter, asking questions, expressing well wishes. There was a short stack of pictures. Liz smiled sadly as she flipped through them. She remembered all the times and places for each. Max smiling down at her in every picture, making sure that she was having a good time… except in one. His laughing face was turned away from her, toward Dean who was laughing so hard that his eyes were tiny squints in his face. Sam's head was thrown back. Liz saw her own disgusted face with a small smile on it.

"What's that?" Sam noted her somber face.

"Just some pictures from the last couple of years. Maria was always good at taking them but really bad at remembering to develop them." She flipped the picture around to show him. "We had fun that night. Max… he had fun but he really, really had fun that night." Quickly she flipped through the pictures, pulling out all the ones of the Winchesters as she found them. "Maybe I should make copies for you guys. You could add them to your box."

"Our box?" He frowned at her. When his gaze flicked to Dean at the bar, Dean's head was bowed low as he had clearly not stopped drinking when Liz had ordered him to. "Oh… our box. I didn't know you knew about that."

"I saw Dean with it once." Liz admitted. "I know how I feel about pictures… maybe you two might need some… to remind you that… there are people who care. So maybe you're less likely to go and do something stupid."

"Like piss off a demon and get our car rolled?" Sam laughed. It hadn't been funny in that hospital but he could laugh it off today. He had made it to another birthday.

"Yeah, like that." She shook her head at him. "This is a send off party, isn't it? You guys are leaving in the morning."

"Yeah." Sam nodded. He tilted his head at the look in her face. "You're gonna be okay. If you want to worry about us? Go for it. I recommend it to feeling sorry for yourself. In fact, feel free to run up Dean's minutes checking on us." They shared a laugh about the running bit of annoyance that Dean had for their battery-eating, minute-stealing phone calls in the middle of the night. "When I scam myself a new phone, I'll make sure you get that number."

"I am gonna miss you guys… especially after a day in the Impala with your smelly feet and farts." She laughed at his abused expression.

"Just imagine if we would have had windows."

"The horror." She giggled and hugged him. "I'll go make some copies. I'll be back." She snuck up behind Dean at the bar. "And stop drinking." He nearly leapt off the bar stool, eliciting another laugh from her.

Sam licked some icing off his cupcake and watched his brother watch Liz go. Shaking his head, he planned to enjoy the first birthday cupcake he'd had since college. That anyone had made him since Jess had died. He didn't even really feel so sad when he thought about her cakes and cookies.

A month later…

(June 2, 2009)

Dean turned his voice messages on speakerphone so Sam could write them down. "'I hope this number still works. I got it off your dad's voicemail a few years back. Truth is, it's an emergency. There's something killing out here in Bakersville. John helped me out years ago.'"

"Write that down. Bakersville." Dean ordered.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Sam griped as he scribbled the information down.

"Sam, Dean. I hope you guys are doing alright. It's been a while since I've heard from you guys. Just making sure that I don't have to take Stan with me on a hunt through whatever meandering route you're on to find your corpses and… I don't know… salt them or something. Anyway, be careful."

Dean hit the button to delete. Sam just shook his head and made a note to call her back as soon as he could get his hands on Dean's phone.

"Anything else?" Sam asked as he started planning their route to Bakersville.

"Nah." Dean started to pocket his phone when his brother snatched it out of his hand. "What?"

"Nothing." Sam scrolled through the phone book with a frown. Dean had deleted the entry from both the phone book and the call log. Scoffing, he dialed from memory. "You're such a jerk."

"What?"

"You know what." Sam cleared his throat as he heard the greeting. "Hey, Lillian."

"Sam… it's been so long since I spoke to you."

"Yeah, I know. Been busy. How are you? Stan still catting around?"

"Yes, but I think it's serious. Betty Lou has been phasing him out of my place and into her place. I don't know that he's noticed yet."

"He's marked for death, isn't he."

"Yeah… His dad is coming up here for the 4th… It'll be nice to see him again." She took a breath. "So… um… where are you guys headed?"

"Bakersville. We'll see what it is when we get there."

"Well…"

"Be careful. We know."

"How's your leg?"

"Better. Almost good as new. Dean's been using your scar reducer."

"Dude, shut up." Dean shook his head and kept driving, scowling at the driver's side window.

"He says 'hi' by the way."

"No, he didn't. I clearly heard him saying 'shut up'." Liz laughed. "Alright. Like I said, be careful."

"We'll keep in touch." Sam hung up the phone.

"Dude, you memorized her phone number." The elder brother snickered.

"You're an ass. Capital A."

A few weeks later…

(June 26, 2009)

Marty shook his head at her. "What are you doing to my wall?"

"You've got pictures of all your friends up here. I'm putting up some of my own."

"Does it say Lillian Sparks on that sign out there?"

"No." She sighed at him. "I just… thought it would be nice to have some pictures taken in this century on the wall."

He peered over her shoulder at the pictures she'd just mounted. "Look at all those grinning fools. Is that what y'all do when I'm not around?" He blinked at the next photo. "Is that Dean Winchester with a smile on his face?"

"See, I knew you'd like some of these."

"That man of yours sure was something." Marty patted her shoulder. "I always thought there was… something… about him. Something different."

"Yeah." Liz traced his smiling face. All of them facing the camera with broad smiles, except Michael; Sam's arm was around Maria. "He really came alive here."

* * *

TBC


	28. Chapter 27

Part 27 – Two months later…

(August 28, 2009)

Liz carried the flowers in front of her, like a shield. She knelt and placed them in the concrete vase beside the tombstone. "I'm sorry, Max. I should have come home with you. I just… couldn't. I hope you can forgive me."

She sat with her husband and thought about the looks on her parents faces when they had finally seen her for themselves. She was too thin. She wore too much makeup. She wore her clothes too tight. Why wasn't she trying to go to school? Where were her priorities? Why didn't she just move back home?

What she needed was a drink. Jim, Jack and Jose were sounding like preferable company to her old haunts. Everywhere in Roswell just reminded her too much of what she was missing. More so than Valor Springs, where her memories of Max were freshest.

Surprisingly, it was Isabel who happened upon her first. She only sat down beside Liz in the grass. "I convinced Mom to put off her expedition until tomorrow. To give you some space. She's flipping out about it but… I left her with the baby and so she has something to do."

"I'll bet he's big." Liz smiled to herself. She was only mildly jealous.

"Alexander Ramirez." Isabel reached into her purse for the pictures. "He is getting so big." She touched the tombstone lovingly. "I hadn't been back since… I kind of wanted him to see Alex… but I knew we needed to give you your time with him." She laughed to herself. "Honestly, I haven't thought of Valor Springs since May."

"Oh?" Liz picked up her head from examining her nephew, who bore a strong resemblance to his mother except for the nose and the eyes.

"Yeah, it was actually out here. I was saying my last goodbyes to Max. You know how I get… and I saw Dean Winchester crying." Isabel caught the surprised look on her sister-in-law's face. "They didn't tell you? They didn't stay long. They thought they were hunting something but other than giving our parents a scare, they didn't do anything. Dean said he'd pass on a message for me."

"Well, you trusted the wrong Winchester for that." Liz shook her head with a snort. "I've been talking to Sam but he never told me… that he'd been here."

"What?"

"No, it's… they never said anything but… Dean kind of did. He… said something and I should have realized but I was in a crappy mood and he didn't push it… he's nice when he wants to be." She shook her head and ran her hands through her hair.

"So, you still talk to them?"

"Yeah."

"I just… you were so… mad at them." Isabel blinked away a tear.

"For about two minutes, I was." Liz sniffed and sank against the tombstone. "I just… felt so guilty that I lashed out at everyone. I thought I had run them off. Sam called me though. We've been talking. He's helped me through this."

"I'm glad you have someone besides Kyle to turn to. He's a good friend but… sometimes you just… need another shoulder."

"I lied to my mom." She admitted. "If I come home and I get another vision, I have to tell her the truth and I can't… I can't bring that danger here."

"How bad have they been?" Isabel stilled. She had figured all that would be over when her brother died. "The visions…"

"Bad. I just… after Max… I just wanted to never have another vision for the rest of my life and then I had one and after the thing was taken care of… I felt… relieved. Does that make sense? I mean, I didn't feel him when he died. I just assumed that part of me was gone but then I had the vision and it was like… I still had him inside me somewhere." Liz laid her hand over her heart. The ache had dulled but it would always be there. "Then I had another one… I almost got them killed, again. But they escaped with some broken bones and some wounds. Last time I talked to them, they were healed up and okay. They still trust me."

Isabel nodded but she had to change the subject. The visions had always creeped her out. "Did you get the pictures? Maria sent some to me, too."

"Yeah, I gave Sam some copies. I put some copies up at Marty's. He protested at first but… I think he misses Max, too." Marty had always been a pretty relaxed boss given that he ran a bar but he had relaxed even more around Liz since Max had died.

"You really want to stay there?"

"Yeah. I think I'm needed there. I get these visions and I can always call Sam to talk about them. Marty and Bobby are always keeping an eye out for me. I'm meeting other hunters when I identify them. It's become a game for me. Spotting those guys when they walk in." She shrugged her shoulders. "Sometimes I can even peg what they specialize in."

"You mean… other people just… hunt like… just ghosts or just demons."

"Kinds of spirits and kinds of demons. There's this one guy… He's scary. Hunts Vampires if you can believe that. I don't think they're like what we see in the movies though. I don't think we would go all Buffy on them with the tricks we think we know. I'll leave the hunting to the experts but… I'm interested." They both shook their heads. "Could you imagine if I told my mother I wanted to stay in Valor Springs so I could become an expert in demonology and exorcisms and ghost hunting?"

"But that's what you want to do." Isabel offered her a smile. "After the life we've had, I don't think you could just go back to wanting to be a scientist. I'm ready to settle down but I'm always going to be looking over my shoulder. I'm going to be the most paranoid mother on the planet."

"I think I would be, too."

"Liz, come to the house. See Alex and Mom. Mom really wants to see you."

"I can't." Liz took a breath. "I feel like it's all my fault. If I had said something sooner or tied him to the bed or…"

"Then you really need to come see everyone. Michael has a very different story about how things came about… and he should have told you before we left. He should have told us all."

The next night…

(August 29, 2009)

Sam tapped his hands on the steering wheel. "The bartender asked for your number. Said she likes wounded, brooding types."

"Did you give it to her?" Dean asked from where he was scanning the obits for odd entries.

"Nah. I told her you were a monk and gave her mine instead."

"Okay."

"Okay." Sam waited for a moment. "Liz left us a message. Are you going to call her back?"

He was focused on his task and his brother was being a jerk. "Who is Liz?"

"Lillian. Liz. Same person."

"Right, I forgot." Dean sighed. He had known that. He knew more than that but it was just easier for him to call her Lillian. "She just called to tell us about the thing that almost ate us. I'll catch her when we run back through to see Bobby about the part."

Sam shook his head. He had seen the way his brother had looked at her the last time they were in Valor Springs. "Are you interested in her?"

"She's a widow, Sam." He didn't even look up from his paper.

"She's my age. She can still date."

"Then you date her. You're the one spending late nights talking to her." Dean exploded. He was trying to work and his baby brother was about to get a cap in his knee if he didn't shut up.

"She's not my type."

"She's exactly your type."

"Call her."

"I'm not her type."

"How do you know you're not?"

"Can we can the girl talk, Sammy?" Dean bit out and stewed for a minute in the passenger seat, smacking the obits against the door.

"You like her." He stated with a broad grin. "You make us stop through all the time and you stopped picking up random chicks months ago."

"I think I've died a time or two too many to have a normal relationship, Sammy."

His brother was being ridiculous. "That has nothing to do with it. She's died too, you know."

"What?"

"You need to call her, she'll tell you if you ask."

"Whatever. She hates me. I like it that way." Dean straightened his paper and began scanning by penlight. "You remember that suburb of Lawrence?"

"Suburb?" Sam snorted. It had been a village if there was a word for it.

"Look. Too many weird deaths. We're going there after this thing."

--

Liz sat on her balcony. Her childhood balcony in her skinny jeans and her sleeveless shirt with her newly shorn hair (the plait sat in her lap) and watched the stars for the first time since leaving Roswell. Her mother climbed out silently and sat beside her, running her fingers through the shiny shag. "You used to love it out here."

"I did."

"I'll bet you don't have a balcony in Valor Springs."

"No… I didn't need to see the stars when I had him in my arms." Liz took a deep breath and looked over everything she had left behind seven years before. "This place has a lot of memories."

"A lot of those were Max sneaking up here in the middle of the night."

"Yes." Liz laughed. "I can't tell you how many times I almost lost my virginity up here." That made her mother burst out in nervous laughter. "But always Max. Never again, Max."

"Why'd you cut your hair, Liz?"

"Max loved my hair. I let it grow so long for him." She fingered the plait. "I'm going to give it to him. I couldn't stand for another man to touch my hair when I know Max touched it with… so much… tenderness. This is his."

"Have you been seeing someone?"

"No."

"Then why worry about it?"

"It's something I need to do, Mom. The past year hasn't been easy but I think that I'm going to be okay. I know that someday in the not too distant future… I'm going to call you and you're going to want me to start seeing people. To settle down with someone else. I don't know when I'll be ready but I have to be ready for it when I am." She held her tongue for a bit. "You were friends with dad when he was with… that other girl, right?"

"Yeah, I was friends with them both."

"How long did it take him to… see you?"

"Once I realized how I felt about him… It seemed like forever. I knew that a part of him would always love her but I know he loves me. Whoever it is that you meet. He'll have to understand that you will always carry Max with you."

"Mom, am I ever going to look at another man and not compare him to Max?"

"Someday. Oh, you're my baby and I want nothing better than for you be here with me but I know you. You're a Parker. You're an Evans but you'll always be a Parker. You're going to forge your way into the world like your Grandmother did. She would… be so proud of you. The way you've held yourself together."

"I've had some good friends to help me over the bumps."

"Maria told us about those men you all met. They were there when…"

"Those are the friends. Good men." Liz nodded to herself. "Have you seen my phone?"

"Someone named Sam called. You left it downstairs. Your father answered it."

"What did he do?"

"Nothing. Grilled him. I think your dad's sweet on him now. He went to college and impressed him or something."

"I'll bet. Sam didn't graduate college. He always meant to, though." Liz smiled and tucked herself into the lounge chair. "Sam's a great guy. We have a lot in common." She saw the look in her mother's eyes. "But he's just a friend."

"How long are you staying, Liz?"

"Maybe a week. I don't know. I just… can't stay here indefinitely. I left Marty alone with the bar. He'll be okay for a few days with the new waitress but… until he gets the new cook under control…"

"If you're a waitress, you can do that here."

"Maybe…" She shrugged her shoulders and crossed her arms over her chest. "But I wouldn't be happy here."

"You can't know that, Liz."

"But I can feel it. Without Max, Roswell doesn't have anything but history for me."

A few days later…

(September 2, 2009)

Dean held the phone out to Sam and then disappeared out the door of the bar. Sam held it to his ear. "Hello?"

"Why did you not tell me you were in Roswell, you jerks?" She repeated the question for the second Winchester on the line.

"Lillian?"

"Isabel told me she talked to Dean when you were in Roswell."

"Dean talked to who? Amanda?" Sam had to rack his brain for the alias to match the given name.

"Yes."

"I didn't know that."

"But you were in Roswell."

"Yeah, I was on the hunt and I hunted into Roswell but it turned out to be nothing."

"Which one of you talked to my father in the restaurant?"

"Um… Not me."

"So Dean talked to Valenti and to my father."

"I guess."

"Sam!"

"Look, Lillian." Sam took a breath. "We were only there for a day. It didn't pan out. We moved on. What happened?"

"Nothing. My mom is wanting me to stay and… I was talking to Isabel and she said she talked to Dean and he was crying or something. I don't know. I'm just… I need to get out of Roswell but they're holding on with like… iron grips." Liz blew out a breath. "I'm sorry. I'm just frustrated. Was my dad mean to you when you called me the other day?"

"No. He was just concerned about his widowed daughter. I think he thought I was a boyfriend or something. Asked what I did for a living, if I had gone to college. You know… all the standard questions when you're sizing up a potential son-in-law."

"Well, I hope you lied about your day job."

"Well… half-truths. Didn't say anything about credit card scams or killing demons but I admitted to my role in… you know."

"Okay. Okay." She calmed down a little. She had allowed her parents to get her riled up. "So, where are you guys?"

"Grady, Arizona. We're finishing up a job tomorrow night… you know, hopefully."

"Come and get me. Whenever you pass through, just come and get me. I rode the bus out but… I'm not going to go crazy on the way back to South Dakota."

"I'll talk him into it." Sam let out a chuckle as his brother made his way back inside and rolled his eyes when he found his baby brother still on the phone.

"He'd leave me here?" Liz gasped.

"It's Dean. He's being an ass. He'd leave you on the moon." His brother only glared at him, apparently still having not forgiven him for comments of a few days earlier. "High and dry… no provisions."

"What? What, Sam?" Dean bit out.

"When we kill this thing… we're heading back to Bobby's for the part, right?" Sam tilted the phone away from his mouth.

"Yeah. So." Dean shelled a few peanuts on the bar and popped them into his mouth. "We got that thing outside Lawrence, so yeah, eventually back to Valor Springs."

"So… stopping in Roswell for a pick up is on the way and we could take Lillian back with us."

"Oh! Sammy! What are you doing?" Dean scoffed. He shook his head slowly and thought of another road trip with Lillian, this one twice as long as the last one. "You're trying to kill me."

"I heard that!" Liz's voice floated out of the phone.

"Come on, Sammy. Have pity on me." Dean sipped his beer.

"Fine. I'll hitch."

"No!" Sam put the phone back to his ear. "No, don't do that. We'll come get you. Don't hitch."

"Hitch? Is she crazy? Doesn't she know what kind of psychos are out there?" Dean barked. That idea was just absurd and anyone with two brain cells would have rejected it out of hand. "She wouldn't last two seconds out there. There are demons and murderers and… and rapists."

"See, it's settled. We'll come get you." Sam breathed out.

"Wow… he sounded concerned." Liz let out a nervous laugh.

"Yeah, he did." He arched an eyebrow at his brother, who waved him off.

"It's a gentlemanly thing to do, right?" Dean killed his beer and took Sam's notes to look them over.

"It's settled. We'll swing by after we kill this thing. Where do we pick you up?"

"Apparently Dean knows. Tell him he knows where."

"Dean." Sam nodded to him. "Where are we picking her up?"

"How should I know?"

"She said you'd know where."

"Why do they do that? We're not mind readers." Dean ground out. "This is why I don't get involved with women. They manipulate you and torture you… I'm not even getting laid out of this. Why should I put up with it?"

"Wow. That was nice and misogynistic." Liz laughed.

"Yeah. It's been a real headache." Sam snorted.

"Crashdown." She said.

"Crashdown?" Sam asked his brother.

"Oh. That." Dean rolled his eyes. "Restaurant with a big UFO sticking out of it. I know where it is."

"Okay. So… two or three days."

"Sounds good. If I stay a day longer, they might be willing to let me go."

"Smothering you, huh?" Sam stared off over the bar. He wished he knew what that was like.

"Something like that, yeah."

* * *

TBC


	29. Chapter 28

Part 28 – A few days later…  
(September 5, 2009)

Liz was helping her father do inventory when the bells jingled. He groaned and looked to her. "Sweetie, would you?"

"Where are all your waitresses?" She resisted the urge to scoff. She had actually missed his reliance on her. When she was engrossed in alien drama, he hadn't been able to do so. That had always eaten at her conscience.

"Well, dude, there was, like, a concert in Santa Fe and dude, like, they all totally had to go."

"And you let them. You're becoming such a softy in your old age." Liz laughed as she picked up an apron to wrap around her waist as she walked out into the dining room.

"Sweetie?" Jeff called after her.

"What's up, Dad?"

"Antennae?"

"Oh." Liz scoffed and whipped a pair onto her head. She rolled her eyes and grabbed a menu while she was heading for the door.

A burst of laughter met her ears immediately. When she turned, Dean was dying of laughter at the counter. "Oh shit. Where is a camera when you need one?" Then he whipped out his phone and snapped one off. "Oh right. I have one."

"Ha. Ha. Funny. You caught me in my uniform." Liz shook her head at him. "Where's your brother?"

"Getting the car gassed up." He looked her over. "I thought the uniform was a puke green dress thing." She smacked him with a menu. "What?"

"Is that why you volunteered to pick me up? So you could see my uniform?"

"Yes." He burst out laughing again. Smiling, unapologetically, for his own deviousness.

"I'm the owner's daughter. I don't have to wear the dress anymore." She smacked him again. "You want something to drink while we're waiting for Sam?"

"Honey, how many times have I told you not to beat the customers?" Jeff walked into the diner.

"This isn't a customer." She smacked him again before ripping the antennae off her head. "This is…"

"Agent Kirke." Jeff held out his hand.

"Simon Kirke?" Liz shook her head and smacked Dean again. "It's Dean Winchester, Dad."

"Winchester…" Jeff nodded and pumped the man's hand once. "You the boy that's been calling my daughter?"

"Dad." Liz faked a gagging spell.

"Actually, that would be my brother." Dean shook his head at Liz's antics. "Sam should be here soon." He glanced at his watch. "I wanted to get to Bobby's in a couple of days. He's got a part waiting for me."

"It's so sad," Liz leaned on the counter, "that we can't transform that car into a person so you could be with your soul mate for all eternity."

"It is sad. In fact, when I die I want to be cremated inside the car. The whole thing, on fire. No one is ever going to take care of her the way I do."

"Or what? You'll haunt me?"

"That's right. I will. I will haunt you to the ends of the earth until you salt and burn the car." He stared at her for a few minutes. "Hey… didn't you used to have like a… mile of hair hanging off your head?"

"She did until a few days ago." Jeff kissed his daughter's head on the way back to his inventory. "Be good."

"I ended my mourning period with a haircut." Liz briefly explained. "Reversal of tradition but… you know.""Tradition?" He clasped his hands together on the counter and waited. This should be good. "What tradition?"

"There are lots of them. My grandmother was an anthropologist. She specialized in Native Americans. I learned a lot from her. There are tribes who cut off their hair as a sign of mourning. A lot of cultures believe that someone should wear black for a year and a day after they lose someone they love." She saw she was losing him. "There are some who believe that vengeance is the only way to truly mourn someone who was murdered."

"There's one I like."

"Yeah. I figured you would." She stilled as she rounded the counter. Her eyes went wide as the pain set in. "Dean."

He blinked at her. Then blinked again. "Shit." He slipped his arms around her and set her in the stool next to his.

"Ah." She gasped, gripping his arm. "Don't let my parents know." He didn't know what to say to that request. Her grip on his arm tightened. "Please. Dean, promise. They don't know I still get them."

Dean caught her head before she pitched backward. He hugged her body to his, making sure no one noticed she was caught in a seizure. When she stilled, he slowly released her. His gaze flicked to the back door but there was no one back there and the diner was empty. She had lucked out. "You okay?"

"Yeah. I think so." She held her head against his bicep for a moment longer. His hand lightly massaged her head. "Do you do this for Sam, too?"

"I do a lot for my brother."

"Do me a favor. There's a doughnut in the case next to you. A plate on the other side of the counter and some Tabasco near that."

"Ugh. That's just gross." But he retrieved all the items for her, barely able to hold the contents of his stomach while she drenched the doughnut with Tabasco. After the first bite, her hands stopped shaking. "Seriously. Gross."

"Ew. Sweetie. Gross." Nancy chided her daughter as she set a tray of clean glasses on the counter to put away for ready use. "Max's bad habits, I see."

"Mom. I kissed the man for nearly 10 years and he always tasted like a Tabasco doughnut. I was bound to develop a taste for it."

Shuddering, Nancy tilted her head at the young man seated next to her daughter. "Have we met before?"

"Um… yeah." Dean offered his hand for a shake. "Dean Winchester."

"Nancy Parker." She nodded and took a breath while she tried to place him. "Dean and not actually the drummer for Bad Company. I remember now. Agent Kirke."

"Your mom is cool." Dean told Liz before he turned a bright, flirtatious smile on Mrs. Parker. "You're a young mother, aren't you. You could be Liz's sister."

"Flattery will get you everywhere, Dean." Nancy stood up straight and got back to work. "Will you be staying for dinner?"

"Oh, um…" He knew he looked like he was a deer caught in headlights but dinner with parents was not on the agenda. "I'd love to but… I had planned to be on the road again, tonight."

"Tonight? It's not safe to drive at night." Nancy shook her head. "Liz, call the Tumbleweed. I don't care if you're already packed. Get them a room. You can leave tomorrow."

The bells jingled and Sam strolled in. "Sam!" Liz managed to hop off her stool to give him a hug. "My mom was just informing us that you'll both be staying for dinner and we'll be leaving in the morning."

"Really?" Sam looked up at his brother who looked put out.

"So, this is Sam." Nancy approached to take the young man's hand. "My husband was gushing about you after your talk on the phone. I'm Nancy Parker."

"It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Parker. Liz is a great person. You should be proud."

"We are." She motioned them to the counter where Dean was picking at Liz's doughnut. "You kids have fun… and Liz, call the Tumbleweed before they fill up."

Sam took a seat next to his brother and glanced around at all the alien murals. "Your family is into all this stuff?"

"Not really." Liz shook her head and lowered herself carefully onto a stool and took her plate from Dean. "It's a gimmick to make money and during July, we make quite a bit of it." She took another bite of her spicy doughnut. It helped some. She could feel Sam's eyes on her. "It happened over there, in the coffee station." She rolled her sore shoulders. "I'll be back. I'm going to my dad for negotiations on our departure time."

Dean stared at his brother. When Liz left, he nudged him. "What happened over there?"

"That's where she died." Sam took a deep breath but his gift didn't work like hers did. He couldn't feel what had happened. It wasn't evil in a supernatural way. He didn't feel anything odd.

"She died. There. How? Nothing ever happens in this town… That alleged crash? Happened way out in the desert, technically in another town."

"You ask her how it happened. All I know is that's where it happened, then her future husband saved her life." Sam glanced down at her plate. "What in the hell is that?"

"She modified your recipe for a vision hangover."

"That's gross."

"Yeah. That's the consensus."

--

Liz adjusted the Mighty-Bright light she'd liberated from her childhood room and focused on her vision. They had to compromise with her mother. The trio could leave before dark but they had to eat dinner. Dinner had been an awkward affair given that the Parkers did not know what the Winchesters truly did for a living. Liz figured that her father was onto the charade because he had asked, gently, how it was that they happened to be traveling through the area that Max and Michael had been in and why they had a shotgun at all. Sam had jumped on the question quick. Shotguns came in handy in the traveling sales business. They had rounds for it but rarely kept it loaded. Dean had countered with 'you're stupid.' He then explained that in the private investigation business that it could sometimes be dangerous to be caught without means of protection. It was a family business and it was wise to be cautious so that the family lived on. He apologized for his false introduction and explained that had he known who he was speaking to in the first place that he probably wouldn't have bothered them at all. It was a rare moment for Liz to witness Dean being genuinely apologetic. Maybe he had some charm after all.

Her sketches were vague but she handed them up to Sam when each was finished. He studied them in silence as far as she could tell. She was busy trying to get them out of her head. Then she heard Sam on the phone. "Hey… I'm sorry to be bothering you so late… I was wondering about some of those… you do? Thank you. We'll be stopping in… a couple of days. We have to make a drop off before we go."

"Wait, do you know where this is?" Liz sat up and peered into the front seat where the pictures were spread between Sam and Dean.

"We have an idea. It's the same hunt we're on." Sam answered her as he hung up the phone.

"How can you tell?"

"We just can." Dean told her. "Get some sleep. I'm gonna try to push her as fast as she'll go."

A day and a half later…  
(September 7, 2009)

Liz dropped her things on her bed. She'd barely said her goodbyes when Dean pealed out and onto the street. Whatever it was, she hoped they came back alive.

* * *

TBC 


	30. Chapter 29

Part 29 – The Next Day…  
(September 8, 2009)

Dean sat in the room and let Sam do all the talking. He'd learned nothing over the years about Missouri except she hated him. Sam stood to get the errands run but Missouri told Sam to take care of it himself. Dean needed a rest, she said.

"What?" Dean frowned at her. "We got a demon to hunt and you want me to sit on my ass?"

"Yes! And watch your mouth. Sam, go. I need to talk to your brother." She waved a wooden spoon at the both of them, warning silently about back talk. Sam left just as confused as his brother.

"What?" Dean barked out but sat up and back when she waved her spoon at him.

Missouri took a deep breath before crossing to sit next to him. "Dean, honey. Don't make me be mean to you. I don't like my voice that way. I need you to listen to me and really listen. What happened to your father was not your fault. What happened to that boy was not your fault and that little girl does not blame you. She does not hate you any more than I do."

"Give me hope why don't you." Dean let out a heavy sigh.

"Dean Winchester. I do not hate you. You remind me of your father and that is aggravating because you used to be a sweet boy." She placed a hand on his back as she lowered her voice again. "I need you to stop blaming yourself. I need you to stop drinking like a fish." He tried to get up but she placed her hands on his shoulders, not pushing him down but not letting him up. "You're killing your brother with worry and you're killing yourself slowly. Be still, Dean."

Dean leaned on his knees and took a shuddering breath. Missouri didn't need to be a psychic to know he drank too much. He reeked of booze and sweat. He hadn't shaved in weeks. He had kept himself on the move or in the bottle. Anything other had required him to feel like a person and he didn't like the person he felt like when he was sober or not killing something evil.

"You're 30 years old and you're tired of living like a vagabond." She whispered in his ear. "You want the Demon dead but you haven't been able to kill it. You just want to stop but your brother is just as hell-bent on this thing as your father was." She rubbed his back and he covered his face with his hands, refusing to look up or acknowledge her words, but he wasn't pushing her away and he wasn't running away. "You can be happy. It's awful to feel you in so much pain, Dean. Sam cares but he doesn't know how to help you anymore."

Dean was dumbfounded to hear his head opened up and laid out. No wonder Missouri rarely told her clients the truth. None of them really wanted it. He lifted his head to look at her. "How can none of it be my fault?"

"It's just not and no one blames you, honey."

"Lillian blames me."

"Lillian blames herself!" Missouri exclaimed and stopped short of shaking the young man on her couch. Between Sam and Dean, she knew enough of what had happened that she could tell him in complete faith the death of their friend was not his fault. "That woman has the fate of worlds on her shoulders and, God bless her, she has faith in you and your brother. You're the one she calls when the other world tells her things aren't right. That husband of hers left a lot of unfinished business but he saved two worlds when he died."

"He died killing a demon." Dean protested. "That's my job. I knew he wasn't experienced enough to handle it. He made me promise to let it be his kill but… he died, too."

"That thing was no demon. Not by any earthly definition. That thing was just getting started. He wanted to get Nathan's attention. His next kill wouldn't have been one man, it would have been twenty. He got Nathan's attention, all right. Lillian tried to save everyone but she couldn't reach him when she needed to… All you boys…" She trailed off and put her hand over her heart. Feeling the other world often took her strength. She stared at the Dean and was overwhelmed by the rush of emotion the other world sent her. Things she shouldn't have known. "She doesn't blame you, Dean. She's afraid of you."

"Afraid of me?"

"I don't know why. She's powerful, that one. A force for good but powerful and afraid."

"So what? She gets visions and senses spirits. Sam does that, too."

"She's not like Sam." Missouri tilted her head. "She's not like me either. Her abilities don't come from the same place. She's something else entirely."

"If she's so powerful, why is she afraid of me? Unless she's a demon. She knows that's what I do. I kill demons." His words were weak. That didn't fit and if she was a demon, he'd never be able to kill her.

"That's not it." Missouri straightened and picked up her wooden spoon. "I don't know what it is. Maybe you do."

"I don't know why I scare her." He didn't want to but he followed Missouri into her kitchen where she had been starting her dinner when the boys had barged in.

"You get so lost inside your head. Just like your father." She took his hands in hers. "You used to idolize that man. He was your hero and he had all the answers. Dean, you always humbled him. Sam asked the questions, he pointed the finger. Your dad could deal with that, not well but he could accept it. You… you had a faith in him that no one else had. He didn't feel like a hero on the best of days. He didn't have all the answers but you still looked at him like he was more than this world."

That thought humbled Dean. His father had been just a man. A man with a mission but just a man. "I miss him."

"I know you do. That's never going to change." She took a breath and stared up at the man he'd become. "Promise me that when you have children… that you won't hide from them."

"Right." Dean snorted, taking his hands back. He rolled his eyes and got a smack in the back of the head with her spoon. "Ow! I'm gonna drag some woman into my life and have kids when this demon wants us dead as much as we want it dead?"

"Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, there are women in this life already? That a woman who loves you would gladly take on your life and your demons?" She knew she should slow down. She was getting dizzy and she was giving Dean more information than he should have but she couldn't stop the words from tumbling out of her mouth. "Give you children to raise safely in her arms while you kill the evil that walks among us?"

"I'm sick of death, Missouri." Dean finally whispered. "It follows me. Haunts me. It wants to finish the job. Reapers are gunning for me. I can feel it."

"Dean. This life is short. Take your joys where you can find them. You used to be a happy boy. A little sad when I first met you but you missed your Mom. You were happy enough with your dad and your brother. You even told me so. You're a man now. You're not taking up with whores anymore but you're not settling down any… and you're not happy with your life."

"I don't know how to do anything else. I am my father's apprentice. All I know how to do is kill evil."

"That is not true. There is a beautifully restored and kept up piece of machinery pulling into my driveway right now. You hardly let Sam touch it. He helps but you fix it. Your daddy wasn't always a demon hunter. He was a Marine in his first real job. He was a mechanic who owned half a business. He brought you boys up, good. You have skills if not job experience. Now get going. You have a thing to kill and I have to keep my dinner from burning."

--

Liz waited her tables and tried to figure out what exactly had bugged her on the road trip home. Both boys had been less than friendly since leaving Roswell but she figured it had more to do with the hunt than her. Still, something was off to her.

Kyle greeted her with a hug. "Hey stranger."

"Hey."

"So… any news from the homeland?"

"Michael's a lying sneak." Liz bit out and moved away to bus some tables.

"This isn't news, Liz."

"He lied to me. He let me believe it was all my fault." Liz blew up. "Apparently, I'd been having visions and not remembering them but Max, my loving husband, was taking notes and hiding the truth from me. What if I had remembered that stuff? What if I could have stopped it?"

"You couldn't have." Kyle placed his hands on her shoulders. "You know now but you didn't know then. That was Max's decision. I can't say whether or not it got him killed but it's been… little over a year, Liz. You can't bring him back now."

"I know." She calmed. "I just… I had to tell someone what Isabel told me. I can't even think about Michael, right now."

"I don't blame you." He hugged her tight enough to make her squeal. "Now, I need a plot for my lady. It's got to be romantic. I think we have an anniversary coming up or something." He frowned when he glanced at her hand. "Where's the rock?"

She looked at her hand. "I… took it off to wash dishes at the Crashdown… I must have left it in the pants I was wearing. I'll find it when I do my laundry."

"You look kind of weird without it."

* * *

TBC 


	31. Chapter 30

Part 30 – A few weeks later…  
(October 1, 2009)

The bar was so full, Liz had to scoot passed body after body just to deliver drinks. New staff were tripping all over themselves. She greeted hunters she'd met before and acknowledged the truckers but mostly ignored any advances. She'd bet there wasn't a hunter in the bar under 45. She'd tried to get Marty to tell her why there were so many in the bar over the last few days, and filling up the motel, but he'd just told her to serve them and steer clear and to make sure that friend of hers could walk her home every night. After that, she didn't dare ask one of the hunters why they all seemed to be waiting in Valor Springs for something.

The door slamming shut made her want to scream. She turned, glanced up and exclaimed. "Sam! Oh my god! Where have you been?"

"Liz!" He hugged her tightly. "How's it going?"

She noted his obvious brush off of her question. "Busy tonight. Hunter convention or something?"

"Nah… Least, I don't think. I never did get my Hunter's Guild card." He jerked his head to the side and attempted a smile that fell short.

She sobered a bit. "Where's your brother? Tall guy? Likes to brood."

"Dean is getting us a room." Sam shrugged.

She looked him over. He was worse for wear but not complaining so she figured he was okay. Still, his silence worried her. "Is he gonna come in?"

"He said no but he could always be persuaded by the right person." Sam hoped he didn't look as worried as he was. He had reluctantly left Dean to get the room. Scared didn't cover it. "Maybe you can go get him down here."

The words could have been a suggestion but the tone was more of a plea. "Marty! Be back in ten minutes."

Sam watched her escape out the door before Marty could give her the okay. Then he sank down at the first available stool and grabbed the beer when it was handed to him. If only he could stop his hands from shaking.

--

Liz knocked on the door and waited and waited. She waited for almost five minutes before the door swung open and Dean leaned in the doorway, clutching his arm to his body. The lights were out in the room, not even the glow from the TV. "Sam get lost?"

"Sam is having a beer." Liz leaned on the railing, leaving unspoken that it was usually Dean who was in the bar having a beer. He sounded okay but with Dean, that didn't mean much. She tried to get a better look without moving in too fast and chasing him off. "So… it's been a while. You look good, Dean."

"I look like road kill." When he turned his head, the light fell on what the dark had hidden when he'd opened the door. His face was beat up. Bruised and cut. Maybe a burn or two.

She fought the urge to make a fuss; he'd just shrug her off. She bit her lip against concerned questions while his eyes wouldn't meet hers. "Are you coming down? Lucas Abel, Fred Knight and Nick Tarry need to lose some money." He only stared at her, eyes untrusting. "Somebody needs to take it from them and if I do it, Marty will lose three customers."

"How much money?" At least he seemed interested, but then again, he might just be making small talk while she hovered outside his door.

Dropping her eyes to the ground, she idly cracked her knuckles. "They've been buying rounds all night… and it's a pretty crowded bar."

"Why are you still here?" He shook his head at her, eyes cast to the vast darkness beyond the parking lot. "In Valor Springs?"

"Told you. I like it here." She smiled as wide as she could muster but he was scaring her with his distance. "I meet all sorts of interesting people."

"I guess." The faraway look in his eyes tugged at her gut. She had to do something. Leaving him alone like this was just not going to happen.

"How about I dress those cuts?" Liz pushed passed him to start gathering supplies from the hotel room after turning on a light. She didn't find much beyond soap and water but Dean had obediently sat down to wait. He was eerily silent while she sponged dried blood from his face and carefully dried a blister on his face. He let her work for a while, one hand cupping his face to hold him steady for her damp rag. She moved closer to get at a stubborn blood stain and nearly lost her balance. His hands shot to her hips but he never opened his eyes. She watched his Adam's apple bob as she steadied herself on his shoulders, shifting back slightly, still practically straddling his leg. "Hey Dean?"

"Yeah?" His voice sounded tired. Eyes closed, lashes resting on those purple-tinged cheekbones, he just looked tired.

"I remembered when we first met." She squeezed out some bloody water and re-wet her towel. His hands dropped back to his sides, brushing her thighs on the way down.

He made himself comfortable against the chair he'd chosen to sit in. "Down in the bar a few years back. I'm not senile enough to forget that or the scathing words that were meant to send me running."

"Actually, we met before that. Not so formally but we did." She handed him a dry towel to put ice in for a nasty bruise on his jaw.

"What are you talking about?" he hissed out when the ice made his face sting.

"Racine in '03. Your dad woke you up in the middle of the night and yelled at you for bringing a girl to the room." She met his green eyes, finally open and looking so haunted and confused. "Some girl who appeared after you fell asleep. Half-naked and confused about how she'd crawled into a bed with someone who wasn't her husband."

Dean stared up at her like she was crazy until it clicked. The details just fell into place. He hadn't thought about Racine for years. Crap hunt for a stupid werewolf that dragged him across several states and dozens of crap hotels… until he finally met up with his father in a dive where… his father had told a beautiful half-naked girl that his son had been raised in a barn. "That was you?"

She held his eyes for a long moment. A green intensity that made her look away first and put some distance between their bodies. "Yeah. I have to get back to work. So, you'll come take them down a peg?"

"It'll be too easy." He told her but he didn't smile. The last few weeks had been hell on Earth and he… well, it took a stop in Valor Springs to make him feel human again.

--

Sam listened to the carefully guarded way that coordinates were passed on. Activity on everyone's radars had picked up and so the hunters had gathered in a safe place to trade information and locations in order to help subdue the forces of darkness that were literally forcing their way into the world. He threw back a shot and tried to calm down. It hadn't been Dean's fault. Dean was careful. Dean was strong but he'd had a chink in his metaphysical armor and it had cost them both dearly. Dealing with the initial possession had been easy enough. But the demon had a powerful friend who had made off with Dean's body; and he had only been caught when Dean had fought through and held on long enough for Sam to trap him inside a circle. Then his brother had disappeared inside the demon for days while it was interrogated and exorcised. It had been a wicked sort of strong and fought back against the Latin litanies, using Dean's knowledge of the rites to delay the inevitable.

Sam never wanted to do that again. He scribbled down some information and slid the napkin over to Marty when the guy came to check on him. Marty blinked at the napkin and began tearing bits of it off to hand to different hunters in his bar. They all gave him a look but he told them all to mind their own business and drink their beers.

When Liz made her way into the bar, some of them were leaving. She counted her blessings and hurriedly began bussing tables and clearing the way for regulars to get to their tables and stools. By the time Dean made it down, Lucas, Fred and Nick were starting a new game and reveling in the space newly afforded to them. To appease the gambling hunters, Dean had a shot and a beer but he kept his eyes on the table.

When it finally died down, Liz was never more grateful to take a stool next to Sam. "So… how's it going?"

"Better than it was." He shrugged wearily. At least Dean was out of the room and engaging people… exactly what he hadn't been doing the last day or so.

"Did you kill it?"

"Yeah." Sam nodded but didn't elaborate. "We couldn't have done it without you."

"What's with the mood?" Liz asked softly.

"It's nothing. I just… I've had some time to think and I think… maybe I'm never going to get out of this life." Sam admitted. "I want to… but I think I might be a little afraid to actually do it. You know? I could always go to law school and be a lawyer but what kind of prosecutor would I be if I could find reasons why it wasn't a man at all. What kind of defendant would I be if I knew my client had a reason not to be responsible for the crimes his body committed and yet I couldn't prove any of it because the supernatural has no place in a court of law?"

"Maybe that's why you chose law? Because it was black and white. It had rules and the rules seemed to work without the mystery of the unknown." She laid a hand on his shoulder but he remained tense. "Sam, what happened? Both you and Dean are very… very… broody tonight and that's not a word I normally like to use."

"Let's not talk about demons tonight. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Let's talk about you."

"Sure." Dean agreed as he took a seat on the other side of Liz. "I always love to hear about Liz."

"You're a jerk." Liz groaned and got up to refill mugs on the bar. She set down a pitcher and she leaned over to address Sam's request. She shrugged at him. "I'm nervous about the idea of moving on… it… I think I'm ready to attempt it but not to do it."

"I think I understand." He made a face at her, which made her laugh. It felt good to think about things that weren't necessarily life and death issues.

"I'm always going to love my husband but I don't want to be alone the rest of my life… but getting to the point where I can even envision myself kissing another man is… very difficult." She sighed heavily. "I kind of feel like I need to get the first kiss over with."

"That, I definitely understand. The first kiss is the hardest. It was nearly a year for me."

She nodded to his wisdom. "Once I know how I feel after that first kiss… then I'll know if I'm ready."

"I don't think you want to start kissing the toads in this bar." Dean winked as he killed the pitcher in front of them. He looked her over. It'd be weeks before they'd find another excuse to run through Valor Springs. "I mean… seriously. That's sadder than when you told me you'd only been with one man in your life. Look… pool table."

Liz shuddered when she thought about any of them even touching her. "Okay. So, I won't be kissing anyone in this bar. I'll just have to wait for… little Devlin to hit 18."

Sam burst out laughing but Dean sat up with a questioning look. "Little Devlin?"

"Betty's nephew. He's 13 and a cutie and the nicest boy in town. It's a joke but seriously… you're right about… the toads." Liz eyed the grungy hunters and shuddered. She tidied up what she could while the bar was emptying. She looked up once to see Dean and Sam talking quietly and then punching each other playfully. Shaking her head, she walked over and refilled their glasses for them. "Aw. Did you kiss and make up?"

"Make up? We were never fighting." Dean told her with a level stare. "Sam wanted to try that Apple thing up there."

"Where?" Liz turned and studied the back wall of the bar. She reached up to pull a green bottle down. "This?"

"No, it was the one beside it." Dean shook his head.

"Okay." Liz grabbed a stool to kneel on so she could study the bottles in a more sturdy position. She shook her head after searching for a while. "I'm not seeing it."

"That's because my brother is an ass." Sam finally admitted. He hated to out his brother while he'd had such a hard time but there was only so much he was willing to allow when it was Liz concerned.

"What?" Dean shrugged innocently as he sipped his beer.

"You're such a slug, Dean." Liz rolled her eyes when she realized her butt had risen to near eye level when she'd pulled out the stool. "See if I give you any more beer tonight." She moved over to where Marty was gathering a stack of receipts and showed her the large tabs on each of them. "How many do you think are going to get returned as fraudulent charges?"

"More 'an half." He shrugged. "But the good thing about card companies now… sellers are protected. I don't lose nothing."

"Good thing, too. Winchesters still have an open tab."

"Ah… they've been through enough this week… they drink free tonight. Rip up their ticket."

"What happened?" Liz frowned.

"Nothing out of the ordinary." He waved her off. "Hunters do as they will. They get banged up and every once in a while I feel sorry for a pair of the sons of bitches." He looked out over the bar. "Let's get most of these guys out the door. I want to close on time tonight. Little Bessie or whatever is dying and she needs to go home, apparently. I don't want you out here too late on your own."

"I'll be fine, Marty."

"Sure, you all say that."

--

Liz wandered around, picking up the left over bottles and mugs and pitchers. The door opened and she shook her head. "Sorry but we're closed."

The footsteps headed for her. She turned with her hands full of bottles to tell the hopeful customer to get lost. The scent of Stetson, sweat and beer hit her nose seconds before a sensual assault began on her mouth. She let out a startled squeal but leaned into it. A moment later, she dropped the bottles to the ground. Her fingers found a cool leather jacket to cling to as her knees turned to jelly.

When she was finally able to breathe again, it was a pair of dark green eyes that met hers. "Dean? What? Why?"

"The first one's out of the way." He whispered as he pulled away. He shrugged and turned to go.

Liz almost called after to him to demand an explanation but she couldn't get her brain to get her body under control. She stood there, staring at the door until long after he'd gone.

* * *

TBC


	32. Chapter 31

Part 31 – The next morning…  
(October 2, 2009)

Liz woke at dawn, her fingers traced her lips. She hadn't quite believed it when it had happened. She had wondered if she'd wake up to find out it was a dream, or worse, a vision. She couldn't take more of that sort. Not after everything she'd lived through since the first one. It would just be a cruel joke after all this time.

The kiss caused enough confusion as it was. Throwing in alien-induced visions was just asking for trouble. She wasn't blind and she was sure even blind women knew what a heartbreaker Dean Winchester was. With his tortured, silent stares, and that bright wide smile and that cocky swagger. Those ridiculous eyelashes and those damn sexy scars.

Shoving her pillow over her face, Liz screamed. Flopping onto her back, she stared at the ceiling. "How old am I? 16?"

--

Sam set out two heart attack breakfast boxes on the little table. He'd given up on waiting for his brother to get up so they could get food but he knew that fresh coffee was the quickest and safest way to wake him up. He'd set it to brew while he was gone. Dean was just wiping the sleep from his eyes when he had returned. "Morning, sunshine."

"It's early." Dean grumbled.

"Not for those of us who slept. You hook up with someone on the way out of the bar or something?"

"Shut up." Dean grabbed a fork and started eating though he had no idea what was in the box. "Where's the coffee?"

Later that day…

Dean sipped his beer and watched Liz out of his periphery. He shouldn't have done what he did the night before but he'd been buzzing and not drunk. Feeling good and stupid, after a week of torture, and he'd done something about it. He thought maybe he should apologize but she hardly looked at him long enough for him to get the words out. Finally, he decided to play her game and forget he'd ever done it.

Liz tried not to act like some needy school girl and beg Dean to know why he'd gone and kissed her brains out like that. She licked her lips and thought of something, anything, that would take her mind off of it. Finally, she pulled out her change from tips and headed for the jukebox. It was in there, she knew it was. G11.

Dean frowned at the song that blared out of the jukebox. "Sheryl Crow? Seriously?"

"I like this song." Liz answered vaguely. "You listen to older music more obsessively. I haven't heard this song in years."

"I thought we'd taught you better."

"Old habits die hard." Liz frowned as she swept the floor. It had been a bad choice. It had been her song with Future Max. Not only had Alex been robbed of 12 years of his life because of the events of that night but Max had been robbed of six years as well. Angrily, she strode back to the jukebox and punched another button. Any button. The strains of "Gone, Gone, Gone" floated out and she couldn't help but laugh.

"I told you. Easiest way to have a good time." He shrugged. "You don't even have to think about it. You just do. You never over-think it. You just… take the moment as it comes."

"I guess so." Liz nodded, realizing he wasn't just talking about the music anymore. She had an out. A way to not have to acknowledge it if she so chose. "When it comes around, you remember how much fun it is. Just not something you go seeking out. It's just a song that you hear once in a while. "

"Right." He turned to look at her with furrowed brows, unsure how exactly to take her dismissal of what he'd been trying to say.

"And I have you to thank. I would have never considered it if you hadn't brought it to my attention." Liz tossed her trash and put away her broom. "If you'll excuse me. I have errands to run before the evening rush."

The following night…  
(October 3, 2009)

Liz traced the knife with a finger. She knew every inch and contour. She had learned them well after Sam and Dean had relinquished them to her. She wanted to learn how to throw them. "So, I hold it like this."

"And you throw it." Dean took the second blade and threw it through the bull's eye. "See there. Easy."

"Just throw it." Liz stared at the dartboard. Then she watched the lines of Dean's body as he threw another. "Okay." She drew her arm back and sent the blade flying. It hit the outer ring and fell to the floor. "I suck."

"Follow through with your fingers." Sam advised without looking up from his obits.

She turned to him with raised eyebrows. "You weren't even watching."

"Dean didn't say it and I felt I should…" He commented with the pen sticking out of his mouth. "Since I heard the knife hit the floor and all."

"I have not been trained since birth to throw a knife, forgive me." She grumbled as she gathered the knives together again.

Marty glared at them. "If you miss the board and hit the wall, I'll make you pay for it." He slammed a tub of bottles into the garbage. "Lillian, you have tables to bus."

Liz set the knives down and moved about gathering empties. When she took the glasses to the kitchen for a washing, Marty gave her a look. "What? Marty, you've been in a bad mood all night."

"Just don't get too attached to those boys, Lillian. You're a good kid. You've been helping them out and yeah… they repay the favors but… try to steer clear." He turned to hose down a bunch of plates, knowing that she was standing there and silently asking for an explanation. "We're in dangerous times in the spirit world these days, kiddo. You're a magnet for danger as it is and hanging out with those boys is like holding hands with a lightning rod… visions or no visions."

"You think I'm a magnet for danger?" she asked then scoffed. She turned to leave the kitchen but stopped. "You'd be right."

"I didn't mean it like that."

"No, you're right. All I ever did for my husband was attract trouble. Hanging around trouble would just be asking for something bad to happen." She leaned on a counter. "Why are you just now concerned with my safety, Marty? Is it all the traffic we've had lately?" He didn't answer her; he just bent over the sink to rinse the dishes. "Marty, come on. How can I know to look out if I don't know that something's coming?"

"Trust us to take care of you, Lillian… or Liz… or whatever the hell your name is."

"Marty…" Liz sighed. "Yeah, I told them my real name first. But they're nosy. They found me on the internet and spooked my folks. You didn't go snooping. My name is Liz Evans. My parents own a theme restaurant that used to be a roadhouse bar, probably a lot like this one. It's never been clear to me but Parker's was a bar where the soldiers would hang out off duty."

He wouldn't meet her eyes when he uttered his next words. "Just don't go falling for one of them boys, Lillian. If you get your heart broken… somebody's gonna die."

Stunned, she tried not to let it show that his words had bothered her. "I hadn't planned on it, Marty."

"Good to hear."

Liz moved around in a daze. She had too many thoughts running around in her head. Too many thoughts about her family, about her dead husband, about her friends both new and old, about recent events and about what Marty wasn't saying when he'd gotten grouchy.

"What's got you thinking so hard?"

"Butterflies." Liz blurted out before she realized that the question wasn't one that needed an answer. She looked up to find a pair of confused green eyes.

"What?" Dean shook his head.

"I have butterflies… in my stomach." 'Shut up, Liz.' He just stared at her. Her face flushed a deep red. She shouldn't have tried to explain but she had started to and now she had to finish. If it wasn't obvious to her, it still might be obvious to other people… which was probably what Marty was hinting at. "I knew you were coming tonight and I got butterflies." He bowed his head slightly. "Because of the other night."

"Right." He shrugged. "What do butterflies have to do with it?"

"Because you dangled something in front of me that I was looking for. Because you… I don't know." She glanced around. No one was around that could hear. "You kissed me. You were doing me a favor and thanks but… I'm a woman, Dean. I have needs and a kiss is a promise of needs being met."

"Maybe I shouldn't have."

"Maybe."

"I didn't promise…"

"No but…" Liz took a breath. "Look. Maybe it means that I'm not ready to be… putting myself on the market or anything but… you can't just do that to me. You can't just kiss me and it mean nothing. It's not even that I wanted it to mean something but… Damn you."

"Damn me?"

"You got me all twisted up in knots over something that was clearly not even… It's my fault. I told you that I hadn't ever been with another man. There were only a handful to ever kiss me aside from him. Only a handful and none of them ever made me feel the way he did when he… then you go and kiss me out of my wits and then I got butterflies."

"You hate me." He tried to remind her. He was a little afraid to lift his eyes to someone who was clearly upset with him for what he'd been told was a pleasurable experience for several women in the past.

Liz deflated a bit. He had been trying to help, not propose. It wasn't like she had expected him to feel something. He had done it to help her make up her mind and it hadn't helped a bit… and that wasn't his fault. "I never hated you."

"You blamed me." His eyes whipped up to hers. Pain and regret shone out from the green depths.

"I never thought it was your fault." She laid a hand on his arm, he flinched but she didn't move it. "I'm sorry if I made you feel like it was. There was not a thing you could have done differently that wouldn't have gotten you killed too." His eyes slid away from hers. There was more than enough guilt going around over Max's death but she had to be clear. "I never hated you. I was afraid of you."

"Afraid of me?" Why had she said those words? He could feel the walls closing in on him.

"Don't ask me to explain that right now." She took a breath and straightened. "Look… just… I…" she huffed suddenly. "I'm gonna be here. I have nowhere else to go where people would understand or accept my choices. You're gonna drive through here because that monster needs fixing after all the damage you put her through. I like to think we're friends but I can't have this… thing. Not right now."

"I wasn't looking for anything. Like I was… sort of saying yesterday… It was a… in the moment kind of thing."

"Okay. The moment's over." She picked up a towel and left him at the counter so she could wipe down the tables.

* * *

TBC 


	33. Chapter 32

Part 32 – Two weeks later…  
(October 17, 2009)

Kyle set down the box. "Do you know what this is?"

Liz blinked at him and the item he set before her on the bar. "A box?"

"Yes, a box. But do you know what's in the box?"

"A gift?"

"You're a smart ass today. I see." Kyle nodded and gestured to the box. "It's from Betty Lou."

"Oooh." Liz smiled and leaned on the counter. "Are you going to open it?"

"Depends, do you know what it is?" He laid a finger on the box. "She gave it to me this morning as she was walking out the door. I shook it. It doesn't make a sound."

"Why don't you open it?"

"Because I figured it out. This is a test. My reaction to opening this gift is paramount to further instances of my getting laid by Betty Lou. If I react the wrong way, it's over. I know it. If I react the right way… it still might be over because I don't know what the gift is and so I don't know what the proper reaction is." He all but collapsed on the bar top.

"So, what are you going to do?"

"She didn't tell you?"

She scoffed at him. He was being ridiculous. "Kyle. You love her."

"Maybe." He groaned and picked up the box.

"You love Betty and no matter what's in that box, you're going to be okay with it. You practically live there as it is."

"I do?" Kyle looked up, back straight. "Do I, really?"

"Yeah, the last two weeks, you haven't come to the cottage. You pay rent, which I like, but you don't eat my food or use my shower, which I also like." Liz stood up and pointed to the box. "Are you ready to admit you're ready for the box?"

"She is nice. Dad says he likes her already. He's coming up, soon. Might be good to have someplace to call home… But… she has to ask me if I want to move in. I can't just… start living there."

"You already are." She pointed out.

"Okay. I'm ready." Kyle pulled the top off the box and packed deep in cotton was a key. "Okay… I'm ready. I'm ready. This is the key to her apartment."

"Big step, that OFFICIAL moving in."

"Yeah… yeah…" Kyle nodded to himself. "I might have to tell her my real name soon." He tapped the bar. "Which means you're going shopping with me."

--

Dean paced the room with his hands braced behind his neck. "So, the groundskeeper tosses the bodies in the furnace."

"That would smell. I'm sure somebody would have figured it out."

"Not if the nosey people ended up in the furnace too… or if he… He could have shut off the valve to the hotel and channeled the smoke somewhere else, right?"

"In theory… but still… even a body at a time, that's a lot of work and dude… it would smell nasty." Sam screwed up his face. "I mean, we're talking a smell worse than your feet."

"Funny guy." Dean picked up a pillow and launched it at his brother. "Like I was saying, the groundskeeper and the staff are the only ones who survive this massacre. When the old kook kicks the bucket, only the staff is around to take care of his remains. How much you want to bet they let the state take possession of the remains and he got pauper's burial?"

"Which is what?"

"In these parts? They dug a hole and dumped him in it. A piece of paper to mark the plot."

"All we need is the plot number."

"Not so easy. We can get the number because the girl I talked to sneaked a peak at my baby brother's picture and asked all sorts of questions. Clearly, she has no taste." Dean made a face. "The hard part is that it's not just one spirit haunting the place."

"So?"

"So, we need to turn on the furnace and salt the ashes." He paused. "Well, it's probably safer to salt and then turn on the furnace but you get the point."

"Okay, are we sure this is going to work? This sounds like a job we have to split up for."

"Which do you want?"

"As much as I'd love to stay out of that basement? I'll take the furnace or you'll blow yourself up."

--

Liz glanced around the pawn shop. Betty Lou was not going to like anything Kyle picked out and he couldn't seem to see that. "I'm getting some air."

"No, Lillian. You have to help me." Kyle pleaded.

"This is all crap. I wouldn't take anything from here as a gift and neither would she." Liz stepped outside and had a look up and down the strip. It was a quiet town but not without its modern conveniences. Cell phone distributors, two or three fast food franchises that were also known outside the state… So she took her time, window-shopping while Kyle debated the gaudy faux-emerald or the faux-sapphire with a chip in it.

When she stopped in front of the cell phone place, she eyed her beat-up piece of circuits. It wouldn't hurt to look around. The salespeople were crowded around a small TV in the back, leaving her to browse in peace. She leaned over to look into the glass case. Her fingers slid over the glass as she contemplated one ridiculously overpriced phone after another. "You're a peach." Liz didn't know where the words had come from. She shook her head and continued her perusal of the display. Then the words came again but she managed not to speak them aloud and grab anyone's attention. Focusing, she slid her fingers back over the glass…

_The young woman looked up when the shadow fell over her counter. A flash of white teeth set in a scruffy beard and accompanied by a manly scent. His eyes sparkled as he inclined his head to her. "Pardon me, __darlin__'__… I was wondering if you could help me out."_

_The smile completely disarmed her. __"Um… maybe.__ Were you looking to buy a phone?"_

_"It's a bit embarrassing, actually." A sheepish grin overtook his face and a hint of a blush touched what she could see of his cheeks. "I'm about to admit my age. My boys, they gave me this new cell phone for my birthday." He pulled it out of his pocket to show her. "My oldest keeps telling me not to call him for every little thing. He keeps talking about this… texting thing… but I can't get this thing figured out… My toaster is smarter than I am."_

_"Well, let's see." She took it from him and flipped it open. "I'll bet I'll have this figured out in just a minute."_

_"Thank you, __darlin__'__. You're a peach." He tapped the glass with his finger._

_She smiled at him. "And I couldn't begin to guess your age. My ex couldn't work a pot of water and he was 30."_

_A crooked smile spread across his face. "Are you hitting on me? I'm old enough to be your daddy."_

"Ma'am, can I help you?" The same woman from her vision spoke. Different hairstyle and a slight change in makeup but definitely the same woman.

Liz cleared her throat. "Um, I was just looking." Then, on a whim, she screwed up her mouth. "I was looking for something that was good for texting. My friends keep telling me that it's something I should start doing."

"Amen. It's only the best thing to happen to phones since slim lined batteries." The woman began pulling a few phones out of the case. "I'm always surprised at how many people don't text yet."

"Oh?"

"Sometimes I get it. People are older and they aren't up on technology." She went on. "But I had this man in, once. He swears that he was old enough to be my father but my father couldn't have picked up texting half as fast as this guy."

"Oh yeah?"

"He was cute so I spent extra time on him." The woman winked. "He claimed he had two grown boys but I didn't buy it. Maybe he thought he'd be more convincing as a text novice if he were that old."

"Sounds like he made quite an impression."

"This is a small town and strangers make a mark. So, which one of these phones looks like something you could wear your thumbs down to nubs on?"

--

Shaking dirt off his shoulders, Dean picked up the tin of salt and gave the corpse a good dousing. Lighter fluid. Matches. "Awesome."

Dean watched it burn for a moment before gathering his supplies to get back to the Impala. He was just sitting down when the ground shook. The night sky exploded with light and then a siren went off. "Sammy."

--

"I'm getting retro-vision." Liz hissed to Kyle as she took her seat across from him at the local restaurant he'd chosen for their evening meal.

"What's that mean?"

"The headache-free visions are back. I had one but it… wasn't of things to come. It was something that already happened."

"How do you know that? We don't come here that often."

"Because one of the people in it has been dead for several years."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. This woman who was in it, I got her to verify it without… you know, giving myself away. Anyway. Confirmed past event."

"Wow. Cool."

"Not cool, Kyle. My life is complicated enough as it is."

"No it's not."

"What?" She blinked at him and his stern tone.

"Your life is not as complicated as you make it out to be. So what if you're an altered human who shoots electricity when she's emotional and gets weird future specs and migraines and blah, blah. You work and you hang with me. That's not a life. You don't have romantic interests, which isn't the real issue. You barely have hobbies and you throw knives at a dartboard on your breaks from work, which you take while still at work." He met her eyes with a serious look. "You could do with some complications in your life."

--

Dean slammed on the brakes almost a second too late. He missed the burning inferno of a hotel by mere feet. Throwing it into park, he didn't even bother to shut off the engine before he was tearing inside the hotel with his jacket pulled over his face. No one was supposed to be inside. Authorities would probably let it burn down. Hell, the owner might request it after all the strange things that had been going on but Dean was concerned with one thing. "Sammy!"

He could hear the sirens nearing and he knew he was the closest no matter how many fire brigade volunteers actually decided to risk their lives to find the guy who left the car running out front. Then he couldn't hear anything at all because the roar of the fire was all around him as he raced down the corridors to get to his baby brother. "Sammy! Answer me!"

Silently, he thanked whoever would listen that the spirits had obviously been taken care of and weren't making his trek any worse. Smoke crept into his jacket. A jacket he had chosen because it had a lot of pockets and made him look cool rather than it could keep smoke out of his lungs. "Sammy! Dammit! If you die before I find you, I'll kill you!"

--

Kyle tapped his straw against the cleft of his chin. "Okay. Let's reexamine every vision you ever had. Let's assume that your darling man wasn't the key factor. He woke up the ability in you and maybe helped push it along but it's all you."

"Okay. We were making out. I was touching him. Visions were about him, coinciding with myself and others we knew. I did get one from a woman who was going to die."

"You weren't in her vision."

"No. She got shot and died. I touched her moments before it was going to happen. I panicked and dragged Max outside and he stopped it."

"And every vision after that… you touched something or someone related to the event to occur."

"Right… I think."

"Okay, so the visions you started getting that had headaches attached to them…"

"Maybe I was around people involved in them. I don't know if they would have had I not intervened." She flicked a tater tot into the nearby trash can. "It's not the first time I had a flashback of the past though."

"What was the first?"

"I was with Max, in Bobby's junkyard. I sat on a car with dried blood on it. It was old but I felt what the man felt who died. I didn't have the whole scope of vision with it… probably because the guy died." She paused. "It was the same guy."

"It was. Do I know him?"

"No. I only met him once myself. I… huh… he was a demon hunter and I see his past?" She looked up at her friend. "Is there a reason I was given this gift? Seeing the future so hunters could have successful hunts?"

"But there's always a specific hunter when you see your visions?"

"Well, yeah. I mean… in the vision, Dean and Sam get there too late but after I tell them what I know… they get there sooner and they save somebody's life."

"Okay… so why those two guys?"

"I don't know. If I knew that, I'd probably bring it up."

"Okay, okay." Kyle took a deep breath. "Okay. Go with me and Buddha on this. All things being connected: You ran into the guy that you would later have past visions of. Why get the visions if he's dead? Some trace of him left behind. Blood or fingerprints, real or spiritual. A player in the scheme of things. In the scheme of your life. If it had nothing to do with your life in any way shape or form, then you wouldn't be getting them. You're a catalyst."

"A catalyst."

"Maybe you always have been." He folded his hands together in front of his face. "Alien king falls in love with you. Saves your life. Outs himself. His love and connection with you answers questions about who he is and where he came from. He didn't always know he was a king. You were the catalyst. Without his saving your life and bonding with you on that level, he would have never known. You were having visions of his life because they became intertwined." He motioned to her. "You hadn't quite developed that aspect of your mind and Max kind of shoved it along. Then Max died."

"Okay…"

"So, you felt him die but when he came back to life, you didn't feel it. You still thought he was dead, right?"

"Well, I guess. It didn't just come back when he started breathing again."

"Maybe it never came back." He nodded. "So the visions you get are stronger if they're from Max but he wasn't responsible for the one with the lady in the alley. You see?"

"I'm not alien dependent for my powers."

"Right."

"But what about the visions I have that I don't remember?"

"Well, we'll have to wait and see on those."

"Okay, if I'm a catalyst… would these things happen if I wasn't around to point people in the right direction?" Liz frowned deeply at the thought. "Do I cause as much as I prevent?"

"Heavy. I don't know. Maybe we'll never know."

* * *

TBC 


	34. Chapter 33

Part 33 – The next day  
(October 18, 2009)

"Mr. Cordova." The voice came from overhead. Dean picked up his head and blinked at the bright lights of the hospital. He hadn't been sleeping but he had gotten tired of the pitying looks from the families of other patients. He must have been pretending to sleep a lot longer than he'd thought. "He's awake."

"Is he okay?" Dean rubbed his face hard. He needed to shave.

"There were some third degree burns but only 5 percent coverage. He does have 20 percent second degree burns though."

"What does that mean?"

"It means extensive time recuperating. Chance of infection. I wouldn't recommend moving him at any time, soon." The doctor tilted his head at the man. "I hear you're anxious to be out of here."

Dean was too tired to make up a convincing lie. He had a second degree burn that he'd received treatment for but that he'd refused pain meds for. He lifted his eyes to the well-meaning man. "We don't like hospitals. Our father died in one."

"The cops aren't pressing charges."

"It's not about that." Dean had to stop himself from yelling. "How long does he need to stay in the hospital?"

"Two weeks and that's barring complications and infections."

"So… if he does get an infection, it could be longer."

"I'm afraid so."

"Can I go in and scare the germs into behaving?"

"Yeah, you can see him now but you have to put on a gown." He reached back and pulled a disposable gown from a rack. He hesitated when he turned back. "After you see your brother, we'd like to have a talk with you about all the breaks we found when we looked at his x-rays."

"He broke something else?"

"He broke a leg that has scarring from previous breaks and it's not the only one. After you talk to him. I want to talk to you."

Dean stood and readjusted his shirt. A childhood full of meetings with CPS or FPS or whatever whichever state was calling it at the time had been full of expressions like the one the doctor wore. They weren't kids anymore but the look was the same. "The kid has a hero complex and he's too old to be pulling this shit. He's always hurting himself, saving other people. I'll talk to him."

Taking the gown, he slipped it on and followed the doctor to the sterile room where Sam was laid out. The burns looked bad but Sam still managed a joke at his brother's expense. "You look like shit run over twice and backed over…" Dean didn't laugh. "It's a joke… cause I'm the one with the… burns and blisters. Ha. Ha."

"Yeah, yeah. Ha. Ha. Fireball." Dean sat so he could see his brother's face without turning his head and aggravating his own burns. "I'm sorry I couldn't get there sooner."

"No big. Furnace would have killed you, you wuss. I'm alive."

"They said two weeks, Sammy."

"Bullshit." Sam shook his head and let it drop onto his pillow. "Come on. It's not that bad."

"I'll negotiate but they have a point. What didn't you burn? Your nads? Your ass?" Dean tamped down the urge to beat something. "Hey… if you have powers of healing, now would be the time to let them loose, you know." Dean shut his eyes against the sight of blisters and fried skin. "You in pain?"

"Some."

"Okay. I'll talk to the doctor. I gotta find a place to sleep while I plan how to spring you."

"Get me out of here soon."

"I'll try."

--

Dean lay out on the bed and held his finger over the talk button. He debated with himself for ten minutes before pushing it. After several rings, he got a breathless answer. "Hello?"

"Lillian, it's Dean." He blew out a breath. "I have to ask you some questions. You're pretty smart, so I figure you'd know what I'm talking about."

"Is something wrong?" Liz dropped onto her new bed. It had taken her forever to get it just where she wanted it and then she had lost track of her phone.

"If someone had… 25 percent burn coverage on their body… would it be okay to move them?"

"What kind of burns? First degree, second degree, third degree?"

"5 percent third and 20 percent second."

"Where are the 5 percent located?"

"On an arm. Most of the other burns are on his chest, other arm and his thighs. Barely sunburned on the face. They say infection is a worry, though."

"Then I wouldn't move him. Is he okay, Dean? Is Sam okay?" Liz felt so tired.

"Yeah. He's talking okay. He's in pain, though." Dean had to clear his throat against the tears that had crept in. "He broke his leg again. I guess it hadn't healed fully."

"Because of his crappy diet." Liz joked humorlessly.

"Right."

"Are you okay?"

"Banged up. Some burns. I'm okay."

"You went in after him, didn't you."

"I had nothing better to do."

"Dean. Are you okay?" He didn't answer her. "Do you want me to come?" He didn't answer her. "What name did you admit him under? I want to send him some cheesy balloons."

"Cordova. We're in Mississippi. A town called…"

"Duryea. I talked to Sam before your hunt."

"I'm okay. Don't come down here." Dean breathed out harshly. "Don't come. I can take care of my brother. So… definitely stay then. Keep him in the hospital?"

"Yeah… is there a reason not to stay?"

"Fake stuff… like always."

"Then be careful." Liz frowned into the phone. "Let me know if there's anything I can do to help."

"Thanks."

--

Sam rested his head between drinks of water from the very kind and very beautiful nurse who had been assigned to his room. Dean watched for a minute. His brother was in high spirits for someone who could have died in that inferno. Though, with a nurse like that… Then the flowers and balloons caught his attention. "Who sent those?"

"They're from Lillian." Sam struggled not to cough on his water. His brother had scared him. "How'd she know where we were?"

The nurse scooted passed Dean on her way out. Dean shut the door and sat down at the foot of the bed. "I told her."

"Okay." Sam nodded. "Why? You're always harping on me for talking to her."

"Cause, Sammy. You talk to her and you take care of me. We're doing the reverse right now. She says it's not safe to move you right now. Even if I wanted to break you out. I shouldn't." Dean looked up at his little brother. "I've taken enough chances with you lately. Let's just… cool our heels here for a while."

"And do what?"

"I have a deck of cards." Dean pulled the new deck from his jacket pocket. "And I always wanted to read that book you were talking about."

"No, you don't."

"No, but I've got a couple of weeks to try."

A month later…  
(November 15, 2009)

Liz swept through the small crowds with beer and whiskey for the tables. She had given her nods to the guys when she saw them wander in but she had made it a point to be a bit busy.

Dean kept his head low as he pretended to scan the stack of obits for anything that would get them on the road sooner rather than later. Sammy had commandeered them a booth so he could keep his leg elevated. Sam was bored. He had a couple of weeks left to keep the cast on. The doctor had wanted him to leave it on a full two months because it was the second time he'd broken it. When Liz scooted passed, he grabbed her attention. "Lil, take your break with us. If I don't get some intelligent conversation soon, I'll shoot myself."

"You can't have intelligent conversation with your brother?"

"Would you think about what you just said?" Sam rolled his eyes.

"Better be glad your leg is in that thing or I'd kick it." Dean muttered. He was promptly smacked upside the head with a dishtowel.

"I'm busy now but I'll stop by later." Liz promised Sam.

"Well, I'm holing up at Bobby's. Trying to dry out the card trail." He gestured to his leg. "The burns and the leg ate up the credit limit and alerted the company."

"I'll make sure Bobby takes care of you."

--

Liz plopped down in Dean's empty seat. Sam was busy doodling in the margins of his newspaper. "So, you ready to kill him yet?"

"Yes and he's acting strange. He's quiet and brooding but not in the fun way. No practical jokes, no jokes about getting me laid, which… I'm doing just fine on." He sighed and sat back. "He's pretty insistent that we not trot around just now. He wants to get a whole new set of cards and IDs."

"Sounds like he's not going to risk going off half-cocked for a while." She slid a beer his way. She was having one, as well. She was done for the night.

"Maybe." He shrugged. "Thanks again for the balloons and flowers. We had fun pulling the petals off and popping them to scare the nurses."

"You guys are so bad."

"What about you?" Sam gestured around the bar. "Same old scene but you seem different."

"You know me. Avoiding the visions and keeping an eye out for the guy in tight jeans that I want to take me home." She laughed to herself. "But taking that step on the truckers is not a good idea. I don't want to go to Rutherford and hit up the clubs without a wingman to make sure I'm safe."

"Then comes the thought that if the wingman is watching after you, the wingman knows what you're doing."

"Exactly." She laughed again and ignored the screech of a chair as Dean pulled up to the table. She was glad he chose not to box her in on her side of the booth. He set three shots on the table. "What's this?"

"Shot of courage." He shrugged.

"You might need it." Sam nodded and slammed his down. "She's thinking about taking one of those tourists to bed."

"Right." Dean slammed his shot and chased with a pull off his beer.

"I just wish I could know that I could have a good time with a guy, get my ya-yas out and not worry about anything." She sighed and slid her finger around the rim of the shot. "You know? Be honest without getting in too deep."

Dean blew out a breath. "Be careful what you wish for. Any one of your circumstances is daunting but they're all converged to make a terrifying prospect for a potential lover."

"How's that?" Liz tossed back the shot and busied herself stacking their shot glasses and sliding the empties to the table's edge for the waitress on duty.

"Okay. You've only been with one man. That's like… You're practically a virgin. Your last lover was your soul mate or whatever. Gah!" Dean shuddered. "You're a widow who hasn't been with a man since he died. And… I hear that your husband was some kind of notorious bad boy in the sack."

"And that's all daunting to a prospect for any future lover?" She shook her head and took a long pull on her bottle.

"Hell, yes."

"Maybe I shouldn't advertise all that, then."

"So you're going to pick up a random guy in the bar so he doesn't know any of that about you?" He prodded.

"You're the expert on getting laid. Tell me my approach."

Dean stared at her and thought about the brief kiss they'd had after closing that one night. They had both pretended that it hadn't happened afterward. For the sake of their friendship. Though, the awkward silences and glances said that things weren't going to be easy. "You're not going to pick up a guy in this bar. If you do, you'll regret it. You're not that kind of person."

"Then who am I going to learn to date?"

"You don't date, Lillian. You fall in love."

"He's right." Sam interjected. "Maybe you have an itch but just a scratch isn't good enough for you."

"You don't know how depressing that sounds." Liz finished off her beer and pushed it to the edge of the table with the others. Dean leaned back and motioned with his hand for another round. "So, sticking around, huh, guys? You'll drive yourselves crazy."

"Have to. Doc says we need to let the leg set fully." Dean shrugged.

"It'll be fine." Sam protested. "Lillian, tell him."

"You did break it twice in one year. Maybe you should be sure that it's healed before you go running around the country again." She made a face at him and tapped his cast with her foot. "Sacrifice one extra month to be safe and then you can run around and kick people in the heads again."

"I never kicked anyone in the head."

"You tried to kick me in the head." Dean muttered into his fresh bottle.

"Well, you have an ass where your head should be." Sam smiled quickly before he took another shot, courtesy of the waitress. "Anyway, Liz, you have to keep me company a few days at a time while I'm under lock and key."

"I don't know. I plan to be busy. I'm signing up for self-defense classes tomorrow and my art class is having a new instructor and I promised I'd stick around to get the new woman settled."

"You're paying for self-defense classes?" Dean scoffed.

"They aren't free."

Sam grinned and cleared his throat. "They are when your father was in the Marines."

"Exactly. I know everything my dad did. I could teach you twice the moves, twice as fast for… alternative compensation." Dean declared.

"Alternative compensation?" Sam snorted and had to see what was going to tumble out of his brother's mouth.

"Meatloaf." He answered. "Mashed potatoes."

"Oh, I see. Home cooked food for self-defense." Liz sat up straight and nodded. Sam laughed to himself as he took his beer from his brother.

"Come on. Skills like that can't go to waste and here are two stomachs that don't ever get home cooked food."

"I'll think about it." Liz rolled her eyes and stood up. "Don't get too drunk, guys."

* * *

TBC 


	35. Chapter 34

Part 34 – Two days later…  
(November 17, 2009)

"Just kick me already." Dean barked and rushed to catch her foot when her aim came close to his most sensitive parts. Then he stared at her shoe in his palm, lifting to examine the atrocity. "What are you wearing?"

"Shoes." Liz tried to take her foot back but she couldn't without ending up on the ground. She'd already spent enough time on the ground and dusting off for one afternoon.

"You want me to teach you self-defense maneuvers while you're teetering on these?" Dean scoffed and mentally measured the heel on her boots. Three inches, possibly another half inch.

"This is what I wear."

"To practice martial arts maneuvers?" He gave her a dubious look.

"I'm not going to get attacked wearing my sweats and tennis shoes, however convenient that might be. It'll probably be at work, after work, or while I'm out. Right?" She shifted her weight to the ball of her foot to stand more comfortably while her leg was still far too high for comfort. "This is what I need to learn to fight in."

"Fine." Dean tossed her leg away and watched her fall into the dirt. "Now, I know why you keep ending up down there."

"For a beginner?" She straightened and stood to face him again with just a touch of annoyance because he made her fall on purpose that time. "How am I doing?"

"Doing okay. Let's move on." He released a deep breath and rolled his shoulders. "Now, any big burly guy sets his sights on you and the second he gets you alone and vulnerable, he's gonna do this." Dean reached out and yanked her arm, making her stumble into him. Quickly, he slipped his arms under hers and clasped them behind her neck. Liz's feet fought for purchase but not even her heels made contact with the ground. "You see. A favorite and you don't know how to get out of it."

"You got me. I'm completely immobilized." Liz gasped as the position made it hard to breathe.

"No, you're not. You're just short and instead of trying to kick me, you're trying to get down. You're vulnerable if your feet aren't on the ground because you know your legs are strong and you can kick off or run away if you could just get down." He relaxed his hold just a bit. "Throw your weight forward and land on your feet. You gotta try to throw me over your head. Use my weight against me."

Liz struggled to bring her feet to the ground. When she finally did, she twisted her body sharply but inaccurately. She landed on top of Dean, who landed on his back.

"Ah." He winced. "See, there, you did it." He grunted as he shifted over a large rock. "How did you know to do that? Turn your body to shift my weight into gravity?"

"One of my ex-boyfriends was a wrestler in high school." Liz rolled off him and examined the area they had fallen into. "Are you okay?"

"Fine. Just give me a minute." He breathed out and let his head fall back to the ground. "Good job."

Liz stared at him through the drying grass and the sunlight. Even through the dust, she could see his face, really see his face. "You have freckles."

"And?" Dean frowned and turned his head to look at her.

"Well, I'd never noticed before." She fought the urge to blush, embarrassed to realize she had vocalized her thought.

"So…"

"They suit you… I was just surprised." She shook her head and propped herself up on her elbows.

"But you like surprises." He winked at her.

They were teetering on the brink of a serious discussion and she wasn't ready to have one of those. "I don't know about that."

"The last surprise I gave you?" It was a desperate attempt to get her to admit that she liked their little interlude but he had to try it.

"I… don't know. Are we admitting that the surprise actually happened?"

"Why not?"

"I kind of got the impression that it might ruin your reputation or something."

"Oh. Oh. OH… I see. So the defensive-dismissive act was all on account of my playing it cool." He nodded to himself. "I understand. I get how I'm sometimes too much to handle."

"Your ego is sometimes astounding." She scoffed at him.

"It's not ego. It's confidence."

"No. It's egotism. You're looking for a little stroke to reaffirm your sense of self." Liz shook her head at him.

"Aw, come on, Lil…"

"You know what… if we're going to have these conversations, just call me Liz."

"Okay, Liz." He stressed her name and reached beneath his body to throw away the rock that had been digging into his ribs. Silence stretched out for several long moments. "So this weird global warming thing…" When she laughed, he glanced her way. "I just remember it snowing a bit more is all."

"I'm from a desert landscape. Snow was pretty rare. I don't miss it." Liz fiddled with a torn fingernail. "So, you and Sam are going to be around next week for Thanksgiving. When was the last time you had one of those?"

"Not much to be thankful for."

"Not much?" She scoffed at him. "You regularly face danger and escape with your lives by… a fraction of a hair width. How can you not be thankful that you're alive today?"

"Okay. So maybe I am… don't push it. I have no parents. No family other than Sammy… I'm glad to have him but he's all I got. I got stuck with a legacy that I'm not even sure I want."

Without even thinking, Liz reached out and touched his shoulder. He almost swatted away her hand. He didn't need her pity. When he looked at her face, he knew pity was the last thing she felt for him. She understood. "At least Sam is family. The traveling circus can be trying with people who aren't blood."

"That's sort of the hard part. If they aren't blood, you can dump their ass on the side of the road without a worry. When it's your baby brother, you're always gonna worry, even if he takes off all on his own."

"It's a hazard, I guess. Love someone so much they become family or love them because they are." She absently picked some grass off his shirt, then out of his hair. He caught her wrist. "What?"

Dean cupped the back of her head and brought her down to meet his mouth. She didn't fight but she didn't kiss him back immediately. The ends of her hair tickled his face but his main focus stayed on her lips especially the full bottom lip that dragged the length of his lips. On the tongue that teased his. On the hand that slid across his chest.

When he dared to slip his hand around her back and drag her body to his, she pulled away. After a moment's pause, she opened her eyes and stood up. "I have to… go… do something."

Dean lay there nodding to himself and trying to figure out the best way to stand up without a) hurting himself on that other rock lodged in his spine, b) leaving a piece of his pride in the dirt or c) rushing after her to make another attempt at getting a better reaction out of her and making an ass of himself in the process. He didn't really know why he kept setting himself up to be kicked in the gut this way.

Later that day…

Liz placed the plate on a tray and slid that over Sam's lap. "Free lunch."

"Awesome but isn't Dean supposed to receive the payment for lessons?"

"Dean didn't teach me anything today, except how to fall down when he hit me."

"He hit you?"

"Well, attacked, you know." Liz shrugged at him. "So I could practice hitting him."

"Oh… well, falling is important though. Taking a fall, I mean." He picked up his fork and took a thoughtful bite. "This is good, by the way. If you don't know how to fall, you could seriously injure yourself. Learning to throw your weight on a dime can save your life."

"Really?"

"Really."

"I guess you're right. I did survive a fall out a five story window." She caught his look. "I had a soft buffer at two stories, fell half a story onto a gazebo roof, then rolled the rest of the way onto a dead body. No broken bones."

"Damn lucky… luckier than that dead body."

"Had my share of luck with that particular dead body." She nodded to his look but didn't explain that the dead body had, in fact, been revived a few minutes later and she had, less than a year later, married said body. Idly, she wondered if that made her a necrophiliac… but then, so would he, but he had died before they had actually… if they had both…

"Lil?" Sam frowned at the faraway look in her eyes.

"It's nothing." She waved him off and shook her head to clear it of odd thoughts. Sam nodded and took a few more bites. "Thanks by the way… It's nice to cook for someone who appreciates it again."

"What about Stan?"

"Betty Lou gets those compliments these days."

"Ah… I see." Sam nodded to his plate and took a huge bite and swallowed before clearing his throat. "You know… some people could consider lurking in doorways a little pervy."

"Didn't want to interrupt." Dean lifted his beer at Liz when she turned.

"Don't worry. We weren't talking about you." Liz slid him a look. "Just don't do anything that'll make me tell on you and have to get Sam and his crutches on your ass."

"Oh." Dean scoffed. "Cause I'm scared of him?"

"If he hits too hard or adjusts your posture too much for comfort, tell me. I'll kick his ass." Sam waved his fork at his brother. "And string him up like a scarecrow on my crutches."

Two days later…  
(November 19, 2009)

Liz opened the door and let Dean in so he could haul the heavier of her shopping bags into the kitchen. She immediately set about putting everything away. "Thanks so much. I forget sometimes I have to carry everything myself."

"I have two working arms and I am currently without a purpose." He hinted mildly that she had reduced the length of their little sessions in the field after what had happened two days earlier.

"If you wait about ten minutes, I'll make you a 'thank you' sandwich."

"Free food. Awesome."

"All food is free for you." She scoffed at him. "You actually earned this sandwich."

"Credit card fraud is not easy." He helped out with the putting away of groceries. "Not if it's done successfully."

"Ever think of doing honest work?"

"Yeah. It's expensive, though. More so than hunting and I would never have time to hunt between killing myself 60 hours a week and paying bills and all that."

Liz kicked off her shoes before she washed up to start the slicing and building. She moved around her little kitchenette to make Dean a Dagwood sandwich. She could feel his eyes on her as he ate his sandwich and she worked on making a smaller version for herself. She opened two bottles of beer and set one in front of him, taking the other for herself. "I think that covers the favor."

"Maybe I would do more manual labor if the perks were always this good." He watched her drink her beer. "We're starting to rub off on you. You're drinking at lunch."

"It's dinner, Dean… not everyone sleeps til the crack of noon."

"I do not sleep in… but I'm not really a morning person." He quickly amended. "Unless I'm hunting."

"Are you getting restless yet?" She asked, her eyes flicking to the door.

"Maybe… but Sam…"

"I'm glad you're putting off that urge. He really needs to get healthier before he puts his life on the line again." She finished her sandwich and took a long swallow off her bottle.

"You off tonight?"

"Yeah." She rose from the table to put her plate in the sink and finish putting away the sandwich fixings. "But, I'm not in the mood to eat any more dirt."

"You're doing really well." Dean forced the compliment out. "You could probably take on your average moronic attacker."

"Good."

"But your sly dogs might be a bit trickier."

"And definitely not up for demons?"

"Right."

"You ever actually taken a class?" She turned slightly so she could see his face.

"No." He shook his head. "What I'm teaching you is what Dad taught me and what we taught Sammy. Modified martial arts that Dad used in the Marines and learned after Mom died."

"So, this is the stuff that works and not just a bunch of fancy moves."

"Pretty much." Dean nodded as he got up and tossed their bottles in the garbage and handed his plate over for a quick rinsing. They stood just inches apart. Dean knew she was short but standing next to her without those heeled boots was very odd.

"What?" Liz whispered, very aware that she could step away at any time. She could tell him to get out. It was her house. She knew he would do it if she asked. "You're staring. What?"

Dean cupped her face in his hands to just look at her. Maybe it was just an excuse to touch her but he waited a second. She didn't break his very tentative hold and she didn't back away when he moved in. Didn't slap his hands when they dropped to her waist and pulled her close. Didn't push him away when he bent his head to hers. Tilted her face up and shut her eyes just as he stopped torturing them both.

This time, neither hesitated to deepen the kiss, to grasp for each other hungrily. Liz slid her hands up his chest and over his shoulders. Opened her mouth to him willingly. Pressed her body against his, tightly, without further urging from his hands sliding up and down her back.

Dean picked her up and placed her on the table. Their mouths ground together while their hands roamed. Fitting himself between her legs, he trailed his mouth down her neck. She gasped as she clung to him, holding his head to her body. A sudden vibration against her thigh sent a shriek right out of her mouth. Dean leapt away and tried to fish the offensive phone out of his pocket. Sam. "Yeah?" His eyes were on Liz as she caught her breath and wiped at her mouth. "Oh yeah? … okay… I'm fine…" He took a deep breath to clear her scent out of his nostrils. "I told you not to get out of bed."

Liz covered her mouth with her hand and watched Dean nod into his phone. He flicked his eyes to her and then made for the door. She sat on the table for a long time, aching and debating. She knew her resolve was melting away and she wasn't even sure if she wanted to fight it… except that she promised Marty she'd stay away from 'those boys' and she didn't know what she'd do if she ever compromised her confidence in Sam.

* * *

TBC 


	36. Chapter 35

Part 35 – Five days later…  
(November 24, 2009)

Liz calmly instructed Marty on how to raise his arms and lay them on the bar to steady himself while he took a seat. The truck was nearly done being unloaded but Marty had pulled or pinched or damaged something while pulling the old crates forward to put the new crates in the back. Carefully, Liz examined his back. "Where does it hurt?"

"Over my tailbone." Marty grunted when her fingers touched the screaming vertebrae. "Right there."

"Anyone ever tell you to lift with your legs and not with your back?" She chided and glanced around. "Dean!"

"Yeah?" He looked up from his newspaper.

"Finish up in the back?"

"Pardon?" Dean snorted.

"Marty's hurt. I gotta get the doctor over here from Baxter. Come on." Liz pleaded while absently rubbing her boss's back. "The new people aren't quite intelligent enough to be trusted to do it right."

"And you think I can do it?"

"Well, you're not stupid, Dean. You can follow a simple instruction while I get on the phone."

Dean thought about saying no but Marty was one of the few who still helped Winchesters with no questions asked. "Yeah. I'll do it."

"Thanks, Dean." Liz poured a cold glass of water for Marty and then poured him a shot of the good whiskey. "I'm going to run up and call Dr. Meyer."

"You remember my system, Dean." Marty grunted out as he attempted to slam his shot without moving his back.

"How could I forget." Dean trudged into the back and looked around at the mess the delivery guy had made. As a teenager, his father had made him help out Marty on a stop. His punishment for getting drunk underage while in the vicinity of Marty's bar. He'd never forget all the instructions they had given him while they laughed it up at the bar and Sammy had his nose stuck in a book.

--

Liz almost slapped herself a million times to keep from staring at Dean's back when he lifted crate after crate into their correct positions. She'd had to remember that Marty was in pain. Though the way Dr. Meyer took care of the patient… he wasn't feeling it quite so much anymore. Idly, she wondered how long they had flirted long distance.

Draping his shirt on the back of the stool, Dean dropped his sweaty, tired, body onto it. His undershirt was soaked with sweat and he was pretty sure he'd be attracting flies soon enough. Liz set a bottle of beer and a huge sandwich in front of him. He stared at it for the longest time before clasping his hands together and leaning over it. "What is this?"

She shrugged at him, smile tugging at her lips. "A sandwich."

"Not the food. This." He lifted a hand to circle the beer, sandwich and the 'something' between them.

"I don't know." Liz shook her head.

He was tempted to let it go at that but he'd had a couple of sleepless nights thinking about their last interlude. He couldn't bring it up because she had run off on him in the field and he had run off on her in the cottage. He took a swig of beer for courage. "I come in here. We flirt. You get me drunk. You bring me food. We have a good time and then we have these intensely awkward goodnights. Are we friends?"

"I suppose so."

"Are we just friends?" Had he really just asked the question? He should just go out and have a sex-change.

"I hesitate to answer that question on the basis that I hate to be a liar." She lightly brushed her fingers against his when she slid a coaster under his bottle. "What if I say no and we are just friends… or if I say yes and we… become more."

"Well, that is a dilemma." It really was. There were all sorts of reasons to just abandon the talk and go on pretending that there wasn't any sort of attraction going on. Just pretend that none of those kisses had ever taken place and that he didn't desperately want to continue the self-defense lessons just so he'd have an excuse to touch her.

"I don't know how to do this." Her big brown eyes lifted to meet his green eyes. She fiddled with the edge of the coaster, almost ignoring the fact that doing so made her knuckles brush his fingertips loosely draped around his bottle. "My formative dating years were not spent dating."

"Mine were." He smirked at her; flexed his fingers just a bit to brush against her hand.

She gave him a glare and a crooked smile. "Screwing is not dating."

"Is that what we're going for?" Quickly, he backtracked. There was no use defending that question and the way it sounded. "Clearly, we are not casual as you're friends with my brother and half the demon hunting community would hunt me down if I broke your heart."

"Maybe we just shouldn't do anything… that, you know… we might regret." Liz breathed out and stilled her hands. "It might be too messy to even really contemplate actually doing."

"You want to live with a bunch of what ifs?" He already did. He hated that part of his mind and he figured she did, too.

Dr. Meyer shut the door to the stairwell behind her. "He'll be fine. He didn't herniate it completely. He does need to take it easy for a while though. He is such a stubborn man. He thinks he's working tomorrow."

"He won't. I promise. And I'll make sure he gets enough turkey the day after to keep him knocked out until next week." Liz glanced up at the ceiling, where he was sure that Marty was getting ready to work but it was just a show. He had hurt himself pretty badly. He was just waiting for Dr. Meyer to leave.

"That's a good girl. I'll stop in and check on him later but I have to get back to my clinic tonight."

"Maybe you should stop in at my place first… and bring Marty his Thanksgiving dinner for me. I could make you a plate too… so he doesn't have to eat alone up there." Liz knew she wasn't being subtle but Dr. Meyer didn't seem to be offended.

"I'll think about it." She nodded and headed for the door with her head held high and a secretive smile.

Liz stood awkwardly for a moment before slipping her hand off the bar. "I need to start bussing tables and call in one of the rug rats."

She was gone to use the phone before Dean could stop her. He picked at his sandwich but he wasn't really hungry and drinking held no appeal to him. It hadn't in a long time… but it gave him an excuse to be in the bar where he could stare at her.

Two days later… Thanksgiving Day  
(November 26, 2009)

Liz sat on the bar so she could see the tables and the oven at the same time. She was also avoiding going home where she'd eventually have to see someone from Bobby's. By using the bar kitchen to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner for all those she cared about AND the barroom Thanksgiving Transients, she could avoid them altogether and just send someone over with plates when the turkey was done. The downside to that was she couldn't do it alone and she had never really spent any time with Betty Lou without Kyle before.

"I don't know why you dumped him but thank you." Betty Lou popped up onto the bar with Liz. "He's just… so great."

"Well, I had met my future husband so… dumping Stan felt like the right thing to do."

"It's okay. I know his real name is Kyle… Valen… something."

"Valenti. But… we don't say our real names in public. That's the reason we use the pseudonyms."

"Neat. Pseudonyms… sounds like pseudo-names."

"That's… kind of what it means." Liz nodded and thought about checking the turkey again but she had just done that. "Nym means name. Pseudo means false. Based in Latin. False name, pseudonym."

"Wow. You are smart. Stan always tells me how smart you are. You've got to be. Marty trusts you in his bar without him. I've lived in this town all my life and Marty won't even let me in here unless I'm with Stan."

"He's just looking out for you. Pretty rough crowd wanders in here." Liz shrugged and glanced up at the stairs. "I started working here with my husband so I was pretty safe. I carved out my own reputation because I'm a pool shark and a card sharp."

"So, you hustle? That's what they call it, right?"

Nodding haltingly, Liz considered the appeal of the blonde for Kyle. She loved her best friend to death but currently she despised his taste in women. "Only a handful of customers."

"Wow… How did you learn to do that?"

Conversation was bad. Conversation opened the door to understanding and so Liz forged ahead. "Not intentionally. I had a babysitter with two part-time jobs. She used to let me hang out and play miniature-golf and pool for free if it wasn't too busy. The cards, I learned from my father during his poker night."

"Holy cow… you've lived an exciting life."

"Actually, I learned all that before my life became exciting."

"And when did that happen?" That's when Liz realized that Betty Lou wasn't intentionally annoying her. She wasn't vapid. She was curious about the man who was currently sharing quarters in her home. She was getting to know her boyfriend's best friend, just the way Liz was getting to know her.

"When I really saw my husband for the first time and realized how much more there was to him. That's when my life became really interesting."

"You must miss him."

"I do." Liz nodded and realized she didn't feel like crying. Not a bit. She missed Max. She wanted nothing more than to have him back but she had accepted the loss at some point. A round of timers began going off, so the ladies raced into the kitchen to pull various sides and pies from the ovens. When Dr. Meyer showed up, she helped them serve up a couple of rows of plates and carved the bird when it came out of the oven. Everyone took two plates out to the bar, Liz made a second trip. By then, the stragglers of the group (i.e. the guys) had wandered in for the meal when they realized Liz's cottage was vacant of both her and of good-smelling food. Liz took Betty Lou and Kyle's hand and they all bowed their heads. "Let us give thanks for everyday on this Earth. For the friends and family that we celebrate with and those who are far away." Liz had to swallow a lump when Kyle squeezed her hand. "Even though we are not all eating in one room, we will be sharing life and laughter."

They broke apart and took seats. Dr. Meyer grabbed two plates and pointed up the stairs. Bobby, Kyle and Betty Lou sat at the bar to eat their dinner while the men discussed some business. Liz helped Sam hobble over to a booth and set his plate in front of him. He stared at it long and hard. "Thanks. I haven't had one of these since college."

"I haven't had one ever…" Dean nodded to his plate. "Unless the box form counts."

"It doesn't." Sam shook his head. As he dug into his plate, he stared at his brother. "Mom didn't do Thanksgiving?"

"The last one I had with her, I was three. I don't really remember." Dean tentatively tasted a little of everything on the plate.

"I didn't poison it." Liz scoffed at him and helped herself to her own plate.

"Forgive my brother. He's never had a home cooked Thanksgiving and he's confused." He took a huge bite of stuffing. "Good job. I salute the cook."

"Thank you. I've been working hard for two days." Liz relaxed and began to eat, though Dean's eyes on her did nothing to relax her further.

"Are you wearing a dress?" Dean managed to shift his eyes to her face and cleared his throat.

"Yes. I wear a dress to Thanksgiving. Part of my upbringing." He was so annoying!

"And now he's picturing you without it." Sam kicked his brother under the table.

"Ow." Dean jerked away, only to rap his knee on underside of the table. "Shit."

Liz avoided looking directly at him and tried to eat and chat with Sam. Her mind was not going to wander back to times in the last week where there were lips and hands in places that felt so good. She had to keep her mind off Dean and get through the day without finding herself alone with him. "Dr. Meyer is upstairs with Marty, when she comes down, she could look at your leg."

"Yes." Sam groaned a satisfied noise. "Maybe she'll cut it off me. I'm getting seconds."

"I can get them." She protested and started to rise.

"No. I'm getting them." Sam waved her off and hobbled away.

"Can I look at your leg?" Dean set his fork down with a smirk.

"You can look at my fist." She smiled sweetly at him.

"I don't warrant eye contact?"

"I don't know.""Well, let me rephrase my earlier comments since my meaning was lost in transmission." Dean cleared this throat. "You look very nice in a dress. You cook very well."

"Thank you, Dean." That felt nice. To be complimented by someone other than her boss, landlord or best friend. "You clean up very nice, too."

"I've been thinking about that last conversation we had."

He had to go there and ruin all hopes of an uncomplicated day. "Oh?"

"I can't expect any sort of anything from you until I show you something."

Grasping for anything that would alleviate the tension in her body, she opted for humor. "Is this gonna get dirty?"

"Funny gal." Dean shook his head but took a breath to say what he needed to say. "I've never had a tether before."

It didn't take her long to figure out what he was trying to say. Dean was a complicated guy but his metaphors were fairly simple. She straightened in her seat. "Is that what I am? A tether?"

"I keep coming back here to see you." He met her eyes. "I make stupid excuses and Bobby charges an arm and a leg for parts… so in the end… It's because of you."

"You're making your brother keep his cast on an extra month because you wanted to stick him in Bobby's extra room so you could see me?"

"When you put it that way…" A smirk crossed his face as he glanced back where he could see Sam wobbling around on his encased leg. "Well, that's just a bonus and kind of funny."

She watched his face carefully. The wavering smile, the flicker of his eyes. "You're really worried about Sam."

"Who's worried about me?" Sam dropped back into his seat with a healthy pile of food.

"Me." Liz blurted out. "Pace yourself."

"Can't. Stan and Bobby are a plate ahead of me, already." Sam picked up his fork, ready to put a dent in his second heaping plate.

"Help yourself, Dean." Liz jerked her head to the side. "I'm gonna go pack up some stuff for Dr. Meyer to take with her." She dragged herself away from the table to where Kyle was beating out a rhythm on the bar. Bobby had already taken himself and some dessert home. Betty Lou was listening with rapt attention as Kyle rambled on about something he'd heard down at the garage. "What are you talking about?"

"Some guys and some gals are heading out into the fields for a booze-out tonight. Wanna come?"

"I'll think about it." That brought back all sorts of noxious memories from high school.

"You'll want to change before you go out there." Betty Lou warned. She flicked her eyes at her boyfriend then back to Liz. "And make sure you've got some kind of escort cause it can get rowdy and people get separated."

"She can stick with us." Kyle promised.

"I just said I'll think about it. I don't know if I'll go."

Kyle cleared his throat before imparting a warning he wanted her to take seriously. "Uncomplicated things don't complicate themselves if they stay at home when there's a party."

Later that night…

Dean looked around. "I don't see a booze-out. You begged me to escort you out here and then you made Sam make me and now we're in the middle of nowhere with no booze. It's highly annoying."

"You're right. We must have made a wrong turn." Liz stared out around them and shivered. The night had suddenly gone chilly.

"Aren't these things usually marked with a burning bush or something?"

"A bonfire, I guess. I haven't been to one since my early high school days." She frowned. "Which, actually, I used to go to with Stan and I was usually left alone, cold, and hanging with some guy just because he was sober and I could trust him."

"You saying you trust me?"

"About as far as I can throw you but Betty Lou was giving me the impression she'd be dragging Kyle off before it was all over. I don't know all those other people well enough to drink with them but I wanted to have some fun."

"So you hauled my ass out because…"

"Because you're imposing as a figure and I can always say Marty hired you as my bodyguard. Most everyone is afraid of Marty."

"But you know what happens when I drink." He teased.

"Which is why I plan to knock the beer out of your hand fairly often."

"Not to mention smacking me upside the head regularly. You're lucky I don't have a chronic concussion." He was starting to get really, really ticked off at her brushing off his comments. "What if I wanted to get laid at this thing? I couldn't with you hanging off me all night."

"Like I would ever hang all over you." Just as the last word escaped her mouth, her heel caught in a divot and she would have plunged to the ground had Dean not caught her and hauled her back up. Liz clung to him for dear life until she got her feet under her again. "Thanks."

"Okay. Look. We've hiked like… a mile… there's no party. Somebody lied to you."

"Betty Lou wouldn't lie."

"She wouldn't?"

"She's too stupid to lie."

"Do we not like Betty Lou?" Dean laughed and let her get her bearings so they could turn around.

"I like her fine. I'm glad I'm not the one who's sleeping with her. I just expected him to fall for someone brighter."

"Because you're brilliant and you're one of his exes. What are his other exes like?"

"Well… dumber than Betty Lou. I guess she's an improvement over Vicki." She shrugged, then shuddered at the memory of seeing him groping the half-naked blonde in the back of a truck. Some things were just better left to the imagination or not thought about at all. "It's his life and Kyle's mantra is simplicity in all things. No lying. No cheating. Just truth as far as it doesn't sting. Golden rule."

"The Golden rule? As in the one they teach kids in Sunday school."

"That's the one." She laughed. "When we were still in high school, he had… a really traumatic introduction to our insane life. He went to football camp all weirded out. He came home a Buddhist beginner."

"Buddhism. Wow. Fat, bald man. Jolly. Not as cool as Santa though."

"Yeah." She sobered a bit as she recalled Sam's words on Winchester Christmases past. Lightning in the distance lit up the sky like daylight. "I think we turned the wrong way."

"I think you're right." Dean frowned into the darkness as he tried to make out the buildings to ascertain the right way to go. Thunder slammed into them with the sudden chill. "Oh, shit."

Then the skies opened up, drenching them both with a male rain. Dean grabbed her arm and they both ran for the nearest shelter while the rain landed in hard pellets on their skin. How they managed to avoid all the pits and puddles and the dangers of Liz's heels, Dean never knew but the relatively dry shelter would have to do until the rain let up.

Liz brushed her rain-soaked hair out of her face. Dean shook his head free of excess rain like a dog, earning a small laugh from his companion. The sudden torrent had caught them both by surprise and broke up any serious mood that had been descending. Standing in the cool lean-to, she realized she'd been having fun. Fun with Dean Winchester. There was no real reason for standing so close to him but she couldn't make herself take a step backward. She remembered that first kiss in the bar. A subsequent kiss in the weeds… and making out in her kitchen that one time.

Dean shrugged out of his soaked jacket, then immediately felt her body against his. A first time for her to make the first move. Dipping his head, he took her mouth in a dizzying kiss. There was none of the urgency that had fueled earlier kisses. This was pure hunger and passion. Clothes were stripped and tossed to the ground as blankets. His lean, taut body lay flush with her soft curves in the pile of wet clothes. Chill forgotten, they let the moment turn into a fiery culmination that weeks and months of flirting and avoiding had not accomplished.

* * *

TBC 


	37. Chapter 36

Part 36 – The following morning…  
(November 27, 2009)

Liz shivered and nuzzled into the warmth beneath her. The warmth shifted, then a hand caressed her hip. A breeze swept over her skin, making her huddle closer. Her hand slid up his chest but didn't encounter the soft, sparse, chest hair she had learned to expect from her years of lovemaking. Then she remembered as her brain gradually acclimated to being awake.

When she opened her eyes, she would not see bronzed skin and a mole under the left pectoral almost under his arm. Wincing at the memory of her deceased husband, she took a deep breath and forced open her eyes. The chest her head rested on was fair… and dusted lightly with freckles to match the ones on his nose. That made her smile for some reason that she couldn't quite fathom. Still, she didn't feel the way she'd expected.

Dean Winchester had a lean but solid frame. Stocky might describe him if he was inches shorter with a pound or two to spare but there was no padding to speak of. Biting her lip, she caved to the urge to trace a design between the little dots on his flesh. After a few stars and moons, he woke somewhat groggily with a gravelly voice. "Why is my ass wet?"

She took a look around at their damp hiding place. "We fell asleep on our wet clothes."

"Ah. Right." He set his head back down with a groan, then a grin. "I knew that."

"You look awfully proud of yourself."

"Any morning I wake up being fondled by a beautiful girl is a good morning."

"You call that being fondled?" Her hand slid down his chest and smoothed over his belly and then…

"Oh, yeah, that's the stuff." He ground out before his breath was stolen from him. Any chill he'd woken with was quickly replaced with a raging heat. Physical needs overcame the niggling conscience, which quickly led to another round of pleasure. A second hurried chance to feel all there was, to focus on nothing but getting to that blissful moment where nothing at all mattered.

Liz gyrated slowly as she came down. Dean ran his hands up her ribs, a half-assed attempt to still her hips. Gently, she laid her upper body against his, resting her forehead on his shoulder. Once their flesh cooled, they were left with the bright shining light of day. Biting her lip, she picked up her head. She took a deep breath before rising to start finding her clothes.

Mood thoroughly squashed, the awkward dressing passed in near silence. Her mind was suddenly racing with all the reasons that it was wrong. All the reasons that it shouldn't have happened, and all the reasons that she should keep it from happening again, given all the things that they had done were not what she had been expecting. Liz stopped as she bent to put on her shoes. "I don't do this, Dean."

"Yeah, I figured." He nodded as he pulled up his pants.

"But we don't really have…"

"Have what?"

"What I mean is… You're not a stay-in-one-place type of person. I'm not sure we'd do well in a relationship. Not that… um… anyway…" Liz stood in front of where he was seated. "I like you, Dean, but… in light of our circumstances; I don't think it's wise for us to continue this."

"Okay." Dean raised his eyebrows as he bent to pick up his boots. "I hadn't actually gotten that far. My brain is still stuck at… 'Whoa. Liz jumped my bones.'"

Liz froze for a moment then laughed out loud. "That shouldn't sound so charming."

"But you did…" He pointed out. "Jump my bones… what was it about me? My devilish good looks? My body? Too much to resist? Huh? Did my eyes smolder? I'm told my eyes smolder."

"I'm not going to answer that." She blushed. She had been the instigator and now he was teasing her.

Dean yanked on his boots and grabbed his jacket off the ground. He shook it out before pulling it on. "We should be able to see our way back now."

Liz would have rather not had him touching her arm the whole way back but her impractical shoes kept sinking into the mud. She needed his help to pull herself out and not sink in again with the next step. Eventually, it was a cause to laugh and that helped her relax somewhat. It was still early; nobody was on the road as they crossed. Bobby hadn't even opened the shop that they could see as they passed. Circling around the main house, they slowed.

Dean leaned on the wall when they got to her door. Liz unlocked the door. "You didn't have to walk me home."

"Come on. I'm being a gentleman." He managed what he hoped was a charming smile. "Give me some credit, here."

Her hand rested on the knob but she didn't turn it. "40 minutes ago, you weren't a gentleman."

"Well, I don't know any ladies who have a mouth like yours about 40 minutes ago."

"Touché." She nodded, screwing up her mouth to prevent a smile.

"You know… it's okay to exist in the moment. It doesn't have to be a big deal." He offered lamely.

"You're right. Thank you." She pushed her door open slightly.

"Lillian…"

"Liz." She corrected.

"Liz," he amended. "You're too old to feel ashamed about a little bit of pleasure, you know?" Then he turned the charm back on. "I'm something of a turning point for most, anyway."

"You're so full of it." She turned away to step inside.

Dean pulled her around and took her mouth in a searing kiss. Liz resisted for about a second less than their first kiss then allowed the deepening kiss. Then she was welcoming the tender assault until her knees started to buckle. Dean released her mouth. "Liz?"

"Hm?" She breathed out and her eyes opened just a crack.

"See you later." He turned and walked away. Liz stood in the doorway, dumfounded.

Before he turned the corner, she found her tongue. "Why do you always have to do that!?"

--

Liz woke when her phone began dancing on the nightstand. It was too frickin' early to be… "Hello?"

"Happy Day after Turkey Day!"

That was a voice way too cheery for her mood. "Hi, Maria."

"Are you sleeping?"

There was the possibility that she was still asleep, her eyes had yet to really open. "I was."

"But it's nearly noon."

"Late night." She had to bite her lip against the memory even as her body's aches reminded her that it had been an early morning as well.

"Do tell."

"No gossip, sorry. Kyle and his love sent me on a wild goose chase where I got lost in the dark, trapped in the rain and made it home just after dawn."

"That sucks. I'll beat his ass. So, what did you do for the actual day?"

"Cooked. We ate at the bar. I fed the regulars."

"That's so sweet. Of course you did."

"Maria?"

"Yeah?""I'm sleepy and I have to work tonight. The replacements seem to be sticking but they're stupid. I have to be there."

"Michael and I analyzed our situation. We've decided that it's time to get married."

Whatever that meant. "He didn't ask you?"

"We fought. Then we fought. Then we fought some more. Then we made up… five or six times and yesterday… he looked at me over the table. My mother pretended not to notice but he was staring at me and not eating. He says, 'so you really want to be with me forever.' More of a statement than a question, you know the way he does sometimes. I shrugged. Then he turns to the rest of the table. 'I have an announcement of sorts.' The table went silent. Mom and Valenti and your parents. They stared and I waited. Michael sits up straight and clears his throat. He says, 'We should have done it a long time ago but we're gonna do it now. Maria and I are getting married.'"

"Just like that?" Liz was definitely awake now. Maria and Michael were getting married.

"Just like that. I almost died. Everyone was hugging me but I was dumbfounded, in shock. Speechless for the first time in my life and I mean it literally. After dinner, during the dessert coma, I finally let it sink in. We want to do it soon but after the holidays."

"Well, congratulations. It sounds wonderfully in Michael's way."

"You're still mad at him, aren't you."

"It doesn't make any sense to be mad at him but I can't forget. He was my husband and he lied to me. Michael was supposed to be his best friend and he lied to me. It's done. I can't change it but I can't forget it. Leave it alone. I will come to your wedding. I will be endlessly happy that you are happy but I can't forget."

"Okay."

"I am happy for you. I really am."

"Alright." She took a deep breath. "No relationships on the horizon?"

Relationships?? Try getting naked and dirty in a field. "I don't think so. I think I'm just gonna play it cool until something happens."

"Okay. I'm gonna let you get to sleep but you and me are going to talk about you coming home for Christmas."

"We'll talk. I make no promises." Liz whispered her goodbyes and hung up the phone.

That Night…

Liz skirted around Kyle's table. "Aw, come on, Lil…" She ignored him and he followed her into the kitchen. "Lillian, we tried to call you. We saw it was going to storm and we bailed on going. You didn't pick up the phone. How was I supposed to know that you were going to go? You had acted like you weren't interested."

"Forget about it." She said finally.

"Are you okay?" Kyle pressed. "Did something happen?"

"Nothing bad. Got lost, got wet. Marched home in the dawning hour."

"The guys ended up not going at all because it was gonna pour down."

"Yeah. It did. I think maybe some raindrops left bruises."

"How can I make it up to you?"

Liz screwed up her mouth. "Well, I did ruin a pair of shoes that I saved three months for."

"I have to buy you a torture implement?"

"Yes." She pulled a beer from the bucket headed for the bar. She handed it to him. "I'm a size 6 and only real leather will do."

"My kind of girl." Dean called into the backroom. "Quality. Make sure the heels are like seven inches high." He stretched his index and thumb far apart to indicate what he thought of her taste in heels. "She's into that."

"Can I help you?" Liz crossed her arms and turned to the door.

"His royal whininess requests your presence."

"He can't operate a phone anymore? What'd you do? Break his fingers?"

"Close. I wanted to." Dean held out the charger to his brother's phone from the inside of his jacket. "I was coming to get a drink anyway."

Liz took the beer from Kyle and put it in Dean's hand, ignoring the shiver she got when her hand brushed his. "See you later."

Liz didn't know how she managed to get out of the bar without tripping over her own feet. Despite his little pep talk that morning, she couldn't help but feel a little shame. She passed Bobby on his way to the bar. He only nodded in passing. Liz let herself into the house and climbed the dangerous stairs to the sunken bed where Sam was stretched out. "Hey, what are you doing here?"

"I was told my presence was requested. I haven't seen you all that much, so I figured a break was in order."

"I really appreciate it but who told you that?"

"Never mind." Liz pursed her lips. "I can always kill him later."

"Is he screwing with your head?" Sam chuckled and made an attempt to sit up but the ancient mattress just fought him the whole way. "I'm driving him nuts. I figure if I get him wound up tight enough, he'll take me out to Baxter and get Dr. Meyer to saw this thing off."

"He's getting there. Keep working him." She laughed and took a seat on the edge of the bed. "You doing okay?"

"I want it off."

"You broke it twice in one year. I think you should follow the doctor's orders."

"Is that what you told Dean? When he called you from the hospital?"

"Yeah. He asked my opinion and I gave it." She watched his face. "You know, he probably blames himself for you getting hurt. You're doing okay now but at the time, he sounded really worried. This is just his way of keeping you safe for a little while."

"Yeah. He knows exactly where I am and he's keeping me under lock and key. Did you know that he stole my phone charger?"

"Yeah. But I've only known that for about twenty minutes."

"Apparently, I cock-blocked him last week or something." Sam shook his head and sank into the bed. "I just want to do something. Doesn't matter what. I'm sick of this room. I'm sick of Dean. I just…"

"Want the room service without the commentary?"

"Yes!"

He attempted to sit up once more. "Can you keep an eye on him for me? He's been acting really weird."

"Weirder than usual?" She cracked nervously.

"Well, he didn't come back last night and he wasn't bragging about whatever girl he nailed when he did show up. He's been… I don't know. Happy? Whistling and the whole bit. So, just keep an eye out. I want to get to the bottom of this."

She didn't dare hope, because she didn't… "Because he's happy? You don't want him to be happy."

"No, it's not that. He's… it's bizarre. He's been beating himself up, like you said. So why did he stop? What's going on? I just want to make sure he wasn't possessed again. You know?"

"Yeah, I know. You're worried about him."

* * *

TBC 


	38. Chapter 37

Part 37 – The next night…  
(November 28, 2009)

"Lillian! Go out with me."

Liz sighed and turned around to face him without letting the fact that it was a chore cross her face. "Billy, you'd only break my heart."

"Come on… I'm the only single guy in the bar."

"You say that like it should entice me." She shook her head and bussed a nearby table. "I don't date customers."

"You dated Stan." He followed her up to the bar.

"I went to high school with Stan. Anyway, that was years ago. Like a decade." She scoffed and pinned Kyle a look across the bar. Kyle just grinned and sipped his beer. "Sorry, Billy."

"Man… Lillian, come on. Give me a chance. I'm a good guy." Good and drunk.

"Billy, you're new. Leave the girl be." Bobby grumbled from his stool at the end of the bar, a pile of newspapers under his elbows.

"Thank you, Bobby." Liz reached over and squeezed his hand.

Dean sat himself down at the bar and tapped it. "Just a beer, if you would."

"Billy, this is Dean. You bother Lillian again and Dean will take your head off." Bobby explained to the new mechanic, gripping Dean's shoulders lightly as he stood. "Dean, this is Billy. He's going to be a gentleman tonight. I'm going to bed."

"Wait, what am I doing?" Dean turned but Bobby was already out the door.

"I see how it is. You've got this town rigged." Billy kept up with Liz as she moved up and down the bar. "Just, come on. One date. I'll show you the time of your life."

"Have you ever been parasailing?" Liz arched an eyebrow as she poured Dean's beer.

"What's that?" The mechanic furrowed his brow.

"Then you can't show me the time of my life, can you?"

"Are you flirting with this guy?" Dean sat up and pointed to the obviously desperate and over-aged punk.

"No." Liz shrugged but couldn't really deny that the thought had crossed her mind.

"Is he bothering you?"

"He's harmless." She shook her head.

"All right, pal. Just leave her alone." Dean stood and turned to the guy.

Too much testosterone in the bar, tonight. She sighed. "Dean, it's okay. He's not hurting anybody."

"Buddy. I'm not looking for trouble and I don't remember inviting you into my private conversation with the lady." Billy stood up.

"No." Liz rushed around the counter. "No. Stop. Right now. This goes no further." She put herself between them. "Now, look. It was some innocent flirting. I said 'no.' Bobby told him to back off. That's all there is to it."

"You heard her. Beat it." Dean cocked his head to the side, gesturing to the door.

"Who the hell are you?" Billy was about to say more but the girl shoved him back into his seat. "Hey."

"You sit. Drink your beer. Then go home." She turned and poked Dean in the chest. "You and me. Outside. Right now."

Obediently, he followed her out the back of the bar but not before rolling his shoulders and glaring at this Billy guy. He was not prepared for the assault on his person once outside the bar. She actually hit him and it actually hurt. "Ow. What was that for?"

"What are you? Some kind of caveman? I told you that it was fine."

"You were seriously attracted to that guy? I think I did you a favor."

"Where do you get off?" Liz shoved Dean against the building.

"Apparently in a shed in the middle of a field." Why did he have to open his mouth? She smacked him again then began pacing the alleyway.

She shook her head. "A moment of weakness."

"Just one moment? Then that other time was a conscious decision?" Dean shoved his hands into his jacket, studying her and trying to figure out what exactly he'd done to piss her off.

"Stop being charming." She made a face at him.

"Without the charm, I'm just rude and rude doesn't get me into your good graces." He managed to flash a smile at her while he leaned on the wall he'd been pushed into.

"Well, I guess it's good that you know your strength." She rubbed at the back of her neck. The night had turned on a dime. One minute she'd been having fun turning down a handsome man's flirting and the next she was breaking up the beginnings of a brawl. She didn't even know where to start in correcting things.

"I do have more than one. Strength, that is."

"You do?"

"I'm charming. Handsome. Athletic… black belt in something or other. I am a master hunter and as you can attest; an animal in the sack." He counted them off on his fingers.

"An animal, you claim." She just blinked at him. His hubris was kind of amusing.

"Come on…" He pushed off the wall and gave her a self-satisfied smirk. "I was good. You can admit it."

Crossing her arms, she stopped pacing and just stared at him. "I don't recall an animal."

He visibly winced. "You're hurting me. I'm wounded."

"How about a little deflated? Girls don't like guys with overblown egos. It's a turn off." She shrugged, shoving her hands into her pockets, quite a feat as she realized they were her tight jeans. "When a girl can make a guy feel good, then she's accomplished something. You wouldn't want to deny a woman the pleasure of stroking your ego for you, would you?"

"So you're doing me a favor, then." He grinned and fell back against the wall.

"Maybe."

"Only… I'm a man of few possessions." He shrugged and spread his arms out but they were still restrained by his hands in his pockets. "I feel like maybe you need a repeat demonstration. So… that you can show me how much of an animal I can be."

"That's a manly directive… but I don't have time." Liz stepped around him to the door. "I'm working."

"I think you need an escort home. You can defend yourself, sure." Dean cleared his throat. "Maybe you let me have the pleasure of thinking that I have the ability to protect you some precious few yards between this dump and your home."

"See, now you know the rules." She bit back a smile and pulled open the door. "Don't come back inside. I get off in two hours." She held up a hand and quickly got the warning out. "Don't ruin the moment we just had by saying what I know you want to say."

"You're the boss." He didn't even try to hide the smirk. They both knew what he had been about to say.

Later that night…

Liz laid her head on her own pillow. She had never figured Dean for a cuddler but he hugged her body to his like a pillow, his head tucked between her chin and shoulder. She swept her hand over his short hair. He shifted slightly onto his back, taking her with him. "Hey."

"Hm?"

"I'm gonna need my body back."

"Uh-uh." Dean didn't want to open his eyes.

"I have to pee."

"Nope."

"I'm coming back."

"Okay." Dean disentangled himself from around her.

Liz returned a short while later, with a long shirt covering all parts of interest and a bowl of ice cream. "Want some?"

"I didn't know you went for the food kink." He sat up, dragging his hand over his face.

"To eat, not to play with… unless you're planning on washing my sheets later."

"You're a tyrant." Taking the spoon, he tasted the ice cream and then looked around to see how the place had changed since he was 14. He had only been inside a few times before and… it was still night time. "Did you wake me up in the middle of the night?"

"Uh-huh."

"Why?"

"You have an iron-grip and I had to pee. It's not my fault you stayed awake."

Put out, he slumped back down and continued his examination. "You don't have a TV."

"Never had need for one."

"What do you do when you get bored?"

"I don't get bored. I have art classes and work and friends. I was looking into some classes at community but I don't know if I want to move to Rutherford."

"What about before?" He motioned around and wiggled his ring finger at her.

Liz shrugged with a smirk. "I had other ways of filling my time."

"So, no TV."

"Enough with the TV." She reached onto her nightstand for her book, which she slammed into his stomach. "There you go."

Dean made a face at the book. "Oprah Winfrey book club. Yeah. Right." He blew out a breath and looked her over. He opted not to comment on her attire for the moment. "So, that Billy guy…"

"Do you really want to go there?" Liz sighed heavily and turned her gaze on him. She had avoided looking directly at him since returning to bed. She didn't know how to play the game. She'd never needed to know how. She had tried to follow his lead but he was infuriating. The more she allowed herself to be around Dean, to let him touch her and make her feel all those sensations in bed… the more and more afraid of him she became. Her visions were never wrong until now. "Why did you get so bent out of shape in the first place?"

"I have seen a million guys like this Billy kid." Dean took the bowl from her. "You don't want to get mixed up with him. You're just a conquest for him. Unattainable and therefore desirable."

"And you're nothing like that." She accused lightly.

"Hey. I have some class."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. I'm still in bed. The opportune time for me to skip out was while you were peeing." Dean let that lay between them for a while. "Okay. Fine, I don't do pillow talk."

"I figured. Give me that." She took her bowl back to finish off the ice cream.

"You want me to leave?" Liz pondered that as the ice cream melted in her mouth; her eyes sliding to glance at him. "You horny little vixen."

"I didn't answer the question.""But I saw that look in your eyes." He nodded to himself with a grin. "I knew it. I still got it."

"Were you afraid you'd lost it?"

"You jumped me first."

"That was the other night. Tonight, it was all you… putting on charm, spreading around the testosterone. Making innuendos. I was just trying to have a good time turning down Billy."

"That's your idea of a good time?"

"It doesn't have to lead anywhere."

"Oh, so you've had experience messing around with a guy's hopes for a lay?"

"Maybe."

"How? You were married since birth."

"No, no. I had several opportunities to lose it before I got married and not all of them to Max. Putting a guy off and keeping him interested is a very delicate balance because the male ego is so very fragile."

"Okay. I'll buy that." Dean clasped his hands over his stomach. "So, let me ask you this… couple of months back, you came to me and reminded me that we had met before. Why?"

"It was cathartic for me."

"What's that mean?"

"It was cleansing, emotionally."

"I know what cathartic means." He rolled his eyes. "Let me rephrase. Why was it cathartic?"

"I kind of already told some of it to Sam. Kyle and I have been working on it." She set the bowl down on the night stand. "I had a vision a long time ago that you and I would be sleeping together. Scared the shit out of me." She stopped him from leaping in to defend his honor. "This was before we had met. I was married. The vision was very detailed. I didn't want it to come to pass. It still hasn't… which says to me that something changed. Something happened to prevent it from happening the way I saw it. I don't know if it's good and I don't know if it's bad. I just know that what we've been doing is not what I predicted we'd be doing. When we met that night in Racine, I rushed out of there. I was scared out of my mind because I saw you and you were lying there, laughing it up. Looking just like my…"

"What's that?" Dean sat up.

She stared at him. At the scars she knew that he had accumulated since they had met. Burns from the fire that had nearly taken Sam. Cuts from the car accident that had caused her so much grief. She laid her fingers on his arm, tracing them. "You didn't have these in my vision. Either that… day wasn't supposed to happen or we were supposed to be together before that."

"Alright. I get that I'm not a bright guy. Sammy tells me all the time but… right now… you're the one that's not making sense."

"Unless it's a ripple effect. Everything that we change affects other events and so on and so forth."

"Aw, crap. You're not going to get into that metaphysical shit right now are you? That shit takes all night to get through. I can handle getting busy til I pass out or just passing out right now."

"Then go to sleep." Liz waved him off as she rose to find a notebook.

He grabbed the back of her shirt and yanked her back onto the bed. "How about you start over? Tell me exactly what you're talking about."

* * *

TBC 


	39. Chapter 38

Part 38 – The next day  
(November 29, 2009)

Liz woke up alone in the noon day sun. Dean was gone. After the second run through of the story, his eyes had glazed over and she had given up on making him understand… mainly because she still didn't understand. She hadn't meant to get into any of it in the first place. She had wanted sex and Dean had offered. It had worked out… until she had to deal with him hanging out in her bed and eating her ice cream. Then the night had exploded.

--

Dean helped his brother down the narrow staircase to eat at the table like a normal person. Sam shook his head at his brother. "You look like shit."

"I feel like shit. Thanks for reminding me." Dean bit out.

Sam began eating with a vigor even he didn't know he had. "What's up with you?"

"Nothing, tired." Dean shook his head. He sat there, stewing until Sam finished eating. So, he took a chance on the only sounding board he had available. "How much did Liz tell you about her life? You know… before we met them all."

"Quite a bit."

"But not everything?"

"Probably not. What's up?"

"We were talking and she told me some things." He took a deep breath. "And I've been turning them over in my head ever since. I don't think I understand it. Not the way she means me to."

"Well… gravity is what makes you fall and go boom."

"Shut up. I'm being serious, Sammy. Listen to me, Dipshit. She has a theory about her visions and what started her on this… I don't know, alternative view of… I don't know. I don't get it and I need some help."

Sam stared at his brother. He looked tired. Like he hadn't gotten any sleep. "She told you about her visions? The ones she got before she met us?"

"Yeah. She told you?"

"Parts." He sat back. "What's her theory?""That what she sees is an alternative version of her life. So like… she has a vision of bliss with me but that never happens because Max died and came back and so I didn't meet her until after Dad died and she was married."

"Huh." An alternative version of this universe.

"Right! I hear it and it's just words. I don't know what they mean."

"Dean… why are you so worked up over this?"

"Because she was so…" He groaned and stood up, raking his hands over his face. "I don't know. I don't know why." He stared out the window where he could see Liz coming out of her cottage and heading to work. She didn't look upset but he had snuck out when she'd finally fallen asleep. It was a dick move. "Look. She listens when I talk. I mostly ramble and I know I don't make sense and she doesn't understand half of it. I figured I could do the same but I feel like I gotta go kill something now." He took a deep breath and tried to calm down. "She comes at me with aliens and resurrections and freaky powers."

"Wow." Sam blinked at his brother. "Aliens?"

"Yeah. Aliens from… I forget where. Nathan, Gary… Amanda. All aliens." Rolling his shoulders, a series of pops and cracks made him wince. He was never this tense. "If she doesn't understand it, how am I?"

"You aren't supposed to. You listened. You asked her questions, probably. You made her think with new eyes. You listened. That's what you were supposed to do."

"Whatever."

"Did you ever wonder why she makes you talk about things?"

"No. She's nosy." Dean scoffed."No. She senses that there's something bothering you. She asks questions. You answer. You feel better. It's cathartic to talk." He rolled his eyes at his brother's blank face. "Therapeutic."

Dean rolled his eyes. His little brother was the second person in a day to subtly accuse him of being illiterate. "So, what are you saying?"

"She just wanted to talk. All those times you yelled at me for staying up, talking to her… we were making each other feel better about the things we cannot change. Everyone feels like that about something in their lives. It's universal. Aliens or demons. It doesn't matter. Our lives are not normal. As well adjusted as she is, there are still things she doesn't understand about herself." Sam sat up to look at his brother's profile. "There are things I don't get about you and you're my blood."

"Right back at you. I mean, really… opera?"

--

Liz stretched before picking up the food-laden tray for the guys who had gotten off early at the body shop. Kyle stared at her as she delivered their meals in silence. "Are you okay?"

"Didn't get much sleep last night." She shook her head and waved him off.

"You know what gives me a good night's sleep?" Billy piped up.

"The fact that both halves of your brain only do half the work one half of mine does?" Liz shrugged and moved on to her next table. When she made it back to the bar, Kyle was waiting. "What?"

"Are you okay?" He watched her wipe down the bar harshly. "Did something happen? A vision or something horrifying? You hit pretty hard with that cut on Billy."

"I'm just sleepy." She shook her head. She didn't dare give Billy a look of apology. She had enough on her plate with the one guy; she didn't need to add another. "Maybe I shouldn't have come in today but I can't just lounge around all day and hope my bills get paid."

"Are you okay? I mean. I keep asking the question but I keep thinking you're hiding something." Something was different about his best friend but even he couldn't figure out what it was. Maybe it was Thanksgiving. She hadn't done it the year before because she had still been grieving pretty hard. "Was it the holiday? Did it hit you?"

"Kyle. I didn't sleep. That's it."

He gave her a warning look about using his real name and lowered his voice. "Yeah but why didn't you sleep?"

"Because I was theorizing on my existence and I didn't come to any decent conclusions." She blurted out more harshly than she had intended and immediately looked apologetic about it. She took a deep breath and let it out.

"Oh. Okay. I'll stop. I do enough of that myself. Scares the crap out of my lady. Now I know what she means."

Later that night…

Liz let herself into her cottage and nearly started when she felt the figure step in right behind her. "Sneaky. You're lucky I know your cologne or else I could have planted your face in the floor."

"You would do that?" Dean shut the door and leaned on it. The banter was over before it began. Neither had the energy for it. "Look… I've been thinking and turning it over in my head." Taking a deep breath did nothing to relax his tense body. "I don't know what any of it means."

"But you think it's freaky."

"Yeah but… okay, so there's like aliens and resurrected human beings running around and there are weird sexual visions, which I want details on later… My world is equally fucked is what I'm getting at. You have barely scratched the surface of that Outer Limits experience, alright? I died." When she looked like she was going to say something, he pushed off the door and stepped forward. "My dad sold his soul to the yellow-eyed demon to save my life."

The blood just fell from her face. "What?"

"That's what…" The confusion and horror on her face spoke volumes but he couldn't understand about what. He gestured to the junk yard outside her window where the original Impala sat rusting. "You didn't know?"

"No." She shook her head slowly. It all started to make some sense. The guilt that Dean carried with him and the intensely conflicted feelings he had about his father. The darkness that had accompanied her vision in the backseat of that salvaged Impala.

"Anyway, I'm alive now… So. Here we are. Dead people. Good looking but formerly dead people. I kill evil things… you know where they turn up and kill… it makes more sense to be united than not."

"Okay. Where does that leave us?"

"I don't know. It'd be a waste of good sex if we stopped meeting in dark alleys." He joked with a nervous smile. "And you know… tested the limits of your new mattress."

"What if this doesn't work?" She motioned between them. He had to be sweating because she could smell his cologne even though she'd taken a few steps back. "Sam and I are friends."

"Yeah… and you and Sam need friends." He stepped forward, matching her progress across the cottage.

"Do we charge ahead with this regardless of the consequences?"

"That's how I like to do things." He stepped forward and into her personal space once more.

"Do we tell him?"

That made him stop and think. "Well… it's none of his business, really. He'd kick my ass for even thinking about it… forget that we're already doing it."

"So, we don't tell him and what? We just see where it goes?"

"That's my vote."

"We're talking this to death." She shook her head. "Do we shake on it?"

"I think we're better off sealing this deal the old fashioned way."

"And what way is that?"

He grinned and shrugged. "Depends."

"On what?"

"How flexible you are."

Two days later…  
(December 1, 2009)

Liz glared at the frost on the window and snuggled deeper into her warm bed. "South Dakota is too cold."

"Not my fault." He grumbled. His voice sounded like gravel, even to his own ears.

"You said whiskey would get us warmed up last night." She complained even as his body turned into hers to combine their heat. "Now, I'm cold."

"I suggested whiskey cause it makes you frisky and that leads to warm bodies."

"You are so…"

"Sexy? Hot, right?" He teased with a wide smile though he had yet to really open his eyes.

"Stupid. Do you think with anything other than what's between your legs?" She murmured even as she tucked her head between his shoulder and chin.

"Sometimes I get hungry and I think with my stomach."

"Right and as soon as you're fed, then it's right back to your penis."

"Are there any real complaints this morning?" He rubbed her back and let her warm breath dispel some of the cold around his exposed neck.

"Your feet are cold."

Pot. Kettle. "Your feet are colder."

"Dean…" Liz whined. "I'm cold and I don't want to be cold anymore."

Three days later…  
(December 4, 2009)

Sam sat down at a table, relishing the lack of a need for a booth or an extra chair. He was slow to get around after being confined in bed for so long but he was mobile once more. Sure, he had taken advantage of Dean's lengthy absence and conned a ride to Baxter but it had been well worth the scolding he'd gotten. He grinned at Liz. "So, catch me up in the world. Bobby doesn't get cable."

"Well, Billy has it bad for our little Lillian." Kyle answered and shot her a look. "She keeps burning him even though I know he's exactly her type."

"No, he's not. Billy showboats too much." Dean shook his head. "He'd have to tone it way down and sprout a brain."

"Wow. That's bad." Sam shook his head.

"What is?"

"We just found someone who even Dean thinks is stupid."

Liz set a beer in front of the younger Winchester. "Be nice to your brother. Maybe Dean is not what is considered traditionally intelligent but he's quick witted when it counts."

"Thank you, Lil." Dean sat up, chest puffed out in pride.

"Just because he quotes Zeppelin instead of Confucius doesn't make him stupid." Liz finished with a ruffle of Dean's short locks.

"And she turns on me like a bulldog." Dean scoffed, patting down his hair, and finished his beer.

"I got a lead." Sammy announced. "We can head south and get out of the snow."

"Yeah…" Dean nodded as he put on his jacket, avoiding Liz's questioning gaze. "We'll talk about it later."

"Where are you going? I just got here."

"We're not five." He scoffed. "I don't have to tell you every time I'm going to leave the bar." His eyes flicked to Liz's for a moment before he removed himself from the group.

"Lillian, you have to tell me what this girl looks like." Sam demanded. "He's hardly been around the last week or something. I know it's a woman. Have you seen her?"

"I am not his keeper." Liz shook her head.

"Really? The town's been pretty dead." Kyle frowned and watched Dean go. "I hope he hasn't been checking out the Quickie Mart parking lot after hours. There are some hound dogs who work the late shift."

"Stan." Liz barked at him.

"I'm just saying that he used to have better taste."

--

"I know you're hiding in the bathroom." Liz called back when she got home from work. She was answered by the door opening and Dean leaning in the doorway. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You've been drinking." She commented as she pulled the blinds and closed the curtains.

"Yeah. I have."

"So, I ask. Are you okay?"

"You know that I have to leave, right? It's been cool staying in one place but Sam and I are on a mission and he's got his cast off. He's feeling strong."

"And you have a demon to kill." Liz nodded and sat on the edge of the bed. "I knew that you would have to go. It's not a huge surprise."

"You gonna be okay?"

She shrugged. "I won't have you getting crumbs in my bed anymore."

"Or confusing your ass for a pillow."

"Right."

Dean stepped further into the room. "Hey, I won't have you nagging me to eat vegetables and to pick up my socks."

"Sam will do that for me." She nodded to herself. "Besides… you won't be gone forever… the Impala is an old car… and your track record is poor."

"One for the road?"

"Just one?" She snorted and motioned him closer. "That's not like you."

* * *

TBC 


	40. Chapter 39

Part 39 – a few months later  
(January 22, 2010)

Liz leaned on Isabel as they watched Maria and Michael dance. They were both dressed in hideous purple gowns but Maria had insisted. Liz had her hand resting on the small bump that took up Isabel's middle. She was jealous as hell but Isabel's husband made a lot of money, she could afford to be a stay-at-home mom. Not that Isabel was one to let that stop her from pursuing her own interests. Her son was with his father across the hall. "She's kicking a lot."

"I know. I have to pee again." Isabel excused herself and needed help to get to her feet.

Her mother sent wan smiles her way. They just made Liz sad. She was okay with her life but everyone figured she must be so sad and lonely. Taking out her phone, she dialed quickly. "Hey guys, just calling to wish Dean a happy birthday. Don't kill anything Monday unless it's like the yellow-eyed demon or something. If you must kill, it had better be worth the misery on a special day. Take care, both of you."

"Much better." Isabel returned. "So, how many horrible visions have you had?"

"Not many. They seem to have died down some." Liz shrugged.

"You know, I miss the visions. I think Jesse would let me out of the house if I had to go save someone's life."

"You're gonna go chasing down a bad guy carrying that watermelon-to-be?" Liz gestured to the unborn girl in Isabel's belly.

"Ew… or bussing tables of drunks." Isabel wrinkled up her face. "So, you're really gonna stick it out up there?"

"It's my home now. I don't know what Kyle's gonna do but… I like Valor Springs. Marty needs looking after. He's giving me more responsibility and a slight pay raise to go with it." She shrugged. "I know it's not microbiology but I like the bar. I like the regulars."

"Save it for your mother." Isabel waved her off. "After what we've all been through, I don't care what you do with your life so long as you're happy."

"Thank you, Isabel."

"My brother would have wanted nothing but your happiness." Isabel sniffed suddenly and began searching for a tissue. "Damn it. I can't even think of Max without the waterworks starting. Stupid hormones."

"You look beautiful." Liz reassured her sadly. "He probably knew for certain this day was coming. I never really thought he'd do it." She pointed to the dance floor where Michael had just stepped on Maria's foot again. He looked miserable but Maria's smile never faded.

"Eh." The blonde shrugged. "He loves her but he's a little slow when it comes to the heart." She studied the brunette. "You look better than the last time I saw you. Someone special enter the picture?" She dabbed at her eyes a bit but Liz was unwavering. "I'll take that as a no."

"I'm not ready for anything serious."

"I know you might think it's too soon but know that I'm not going to be upset if you start seeing someone… unless he's a jerk."

"Okay." Liz nodded, feeling guilty for not earning the words from her (former) sister-in-law. "Just don't tell my mother that I'm not really looking. Kyle's been trying to set me up with this jerk from the garage but… While he is adorable, he's just…"

"Not Max?"

Liz blinked at Isabel. She had never once compared Billy to Max. She had not considered Billy at all. He had been a fleeting thought of sexual frustration but never been more than that in Liz's mind. "Maybe."

"Promise me that you won't play the martyr. You're young and beautiful. Date. Try on some guys for size. Just be careful. There are a lot of jerks out there."

"You don't have to worry about that. I know some moves that will plant a jerk in the dirt."

Isabel laughed. "You're taking self-defense?"

"I had a few lessons before Thanksgiving."

"Just a few?"

"Dean was bored and I didn't want to spend the money to learn the same thing. I just had to make him a couple of sandwiches to settle up."

"They still run through?" Isabel blinked at her. "The way I saw him last… Well… I don't know him that well but I couldn't bear to face the wife of a man I let die."

"I didn't ever really blame him, Isabel. It was convenient for a while but they are good guys and they tried their hardest. Maybe if I had told them they would be fighting aliens. Maybe if Max hadn't turned off his phone. Maybe if Michael had told Max to tell me about the visions I blocked out. Maybe."

"Never sell yourself short, Liz." Isabel proclaimed. "I love your heart and your soul too much. I had better…. Never find out you settled." She wiped at her nose and dabbed at her eyes. "I'm a hormonal pregnant woman. I'm telling Jesse this is the last time."

Liz handed Isabel another tissue. "I promise you that I won't settle for anything less than I deserve."

"Good. After all the crap we put you through, you deserve to be just as happy as Max made you."

"I don't know if I'll ever have that again but I will make sure what I have is real."

"Good."

"Liz! Honey!" Diane made her way through the tables to them. "You look so beautiful."

"Thank you." Liz nodded sadly.

"Are you staying long?

"I'm thinking about it but I need to get back. I left my boss alone with a bunch of children to tend to. The doctor says he needs to take it easy." She nodded to Diane's confused expression. "He nearly herniated a disc before Thanksgiving but he insists that he's fine and doesn't need help. I'm the only long-timer there. The other staff are barely over 21 and they just don't care about him the way I do."

"I'm sure he appreciates you taking care of him."

"Not as much as he appreciates Dr. Meyer's house calls." Liz shot Isabel a look.

"Really? Marty?" The blonde laughed. "I can't believe it. He has everyone thinking he's got a heart of stone. I know Valor Springs doesn't have a hospital so where…"

"From two towns over. They flirt like fiends and think no one has them figured out. She rushed over when he got hurt. Then when she came for Thanksgiving, two days later, she'd had her hair done, her hands manicured and her makeup perfect. She and Marty ate alone upstairs while the rest of us had our meal with the stragglers."

"Is this… place… rough?" Diane asked softly.

"I guess so." Liz's smile faded. "There are always guys who flirt but Kyle always walks me home when I work late. When it's slow, Marty watches me. Bobby's is just down the street. Max and I used to make the walk together." She rolled her eyes suddenly. "You will never guess what Bobby did?"

"What?" Isabel grinned and leaned on her elbow to hear the story.

"Marty was still confined to bed and the guys were having fun and that guy Kyle wants me to date was coming on too strong. I told him no and then Bobby told him to let up, then he assigns Dean to protect my virtue. Dean went so completely overboard. He almost started a brawl over some innocent flirting. I could have killed Bobby for giving Dean the idea."

"That must have been hilarious." Isabel giggles. "So they were there for the holidays."

"Until the fifth or six… They only stayed so long to fix the car, again, and to let Sam's leg set completely."

"He broke it again? Or did he break the other one?"

"Yes. The same leg in almost the same place." Liz sighed heavily. "And who do they call? Me. So, I can worry even though they never listen to me. The doctor told them two months would be better than the usual cast-time due to the fact it was the second break on the same leg in a year."

"Sam and Dean. I think I heard your mother say something about them." Diane broke in. "Are you seeing… one of them?"

"Oh, God, no. Mom. Please." Isabel scoffed at her mother. "Liz is way out of Dean's league and he's tried to hit on her, believe me. Sam and Liz are good friends, though. He's a sweet guy."

"I'm so glad that you have some support up there, Liz."

"No, Mom. No support from them. They travel a lot. They only stop in to fix their car and go."

"What sort of work do they do?" Diane pressed.

Liz looked at Isabel, who subtly shook her head. "Private Investigation and Protection. Freelance so they're always on the move looking for more work. It's a family business."

"How interesting."

The Next day…  
(January 23, 2010)

Sam groaned as he set himself down in the car. The last two days had been hell. Dean had been very focused and the booze was nowhere in sight. All good things but Dean had nearly balked when it came to decapitate the demon. The car shook when Dean slammed the trunk shut and limped around to climb into the driver's seat. "How's the arm?"

"Fine." Dean bit out.

"The leg?"

"Peachy."

"You need to go rest?""We need to pick up our shit and hit the road." Dean groaned as he put the car in gear. He glanced at his brother. "How's your leg?"

"My leg is fine. You're the one that nearly got squashed by a big burly demon." He pointed out. He fished his phone out of the glove compartment, unpleased to find it had a few broken and melted M&M's stuck to it. "This is gross, dude."

"Dude, I'm not giving a fuck right now." Dean set them on the road back to the hotel room.

"It's gross." Sam repeated and rolled down the window to flick pieces of candy off his phone. He ended up using his shirt to wipe it off so he could check his messages. Then he had to smile. "Liz says you're not allowed to hunt tomorrow."

"Why the fuck not?" Dean groaned and hit the brake a little too hard in front of their room.

"Cause it's your birthday."

"It is?" Dean lifted a hand to tick off the days. "Hey, I guess it is. How 'bout that?"

"You go grab the stuff. I'll get the front desk squared away." Sam was already out the door before Dean could protest. He dialed quickly before Sam could change his mind. He got voice mail.

"Hey… Liz… Got your message. Thanks. Um… I had kind of forgotten it was coming up… so… yeah. Thanks." Stupid, stupid, stupid. Dean hit the end button and got out of the car. "Come on, Dean. Get it together." He cursed to himself under his breath while he tossed things back in his bag, not caring if they were clean or dirty. He ripped notes off the walls and tossed them on top of Sam's laptop. He was just tossing his bag in the back seat when Sam returned to get his things together. "Hurry it up, Sammy."

"Yeah, like I'm the geezer."

"Punk."

"Jerk."

"Bitch." Dean was about to add to the game when his phone rang. "Hello?"

"Hey, Dean. You okay?"

"Yeah." Dean cleared his throat and had to center himself a bit. "Just came off a hunt. Got your message."

"Yeah, I got yours. I'm at my parents'. I don't even know what I'm doing here. I love them but I don't fit here anymore."

"You need a ride back?"

"No, I've got it covered. Kyle and I are heading back tomorrow."

"Take care."

"Yeah, you, too. Sleep tomorrow or something. Don't kill on your birthday."

"Okay."

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Nothing. Bye."

"See you later." Dean closed his phone and took a seat in the car. Sam was taking forever. "Get the lead out!"

"You could help. Most of this mess is yours."

"That's what housekeeping is for."

"Whatever, man," Sam muttered as he managed to get all his things in one load to the car, his dirty clothes carefully separated from the clean ones. "Where we headed next?"

"We can make the Grand Canyon by dawn." Dean suggested.

"Something brewing down there?"

"Not a hunt. You ever seen the Grand Canyon?"

"No."

"Then, let's go."

* * *

TBC 


	41. Chapter 40

Part 40 – A few months later…  
(April 9, 2010)

Liz sighed heavily as she had to move a heavy arm in order to get comfortable. She punched her pillow. And smushed her pillows with her fists. Then her hand hit cold. "Dean." He made a noise in his throat. "Dean." He breathed out through his nose and cracked an eye open. "I'm bleeding and it's your fault."

"Come again?" He forced himself to sit up.

"This." She shoved her hand into his face. A trickle of blood forming. "Why is my hand bleeding?"

Dean sat up all the way and stared at her hand and then winced. "Oh shit. It's a habit." He pulled the knife from under the pillow. "Sorry."

"You put a machete under my pillow?"

"This…" He held it up. "Is hardly a machete."

"It's a huge freaking knife, Dean."

"This is a Bowie-styled silver blade. It's the kind of knife you want nearby in case something ugly tries to crawl up your ass in your sleep."

"So? I'm bleeding."

"Just be glad it wasn't the Nighthawk or the Strider. They have serrated blades." Dean set the knife on the nightstand and got to his feet. He yanked his shirt off the floor and wrapped it around her hand. "It's clean. It's barely a paper cut."

"It hurts." She complained while he went in search of her first aid kit. "Why would you keep a knife under my pillow anyway? Bobby keeps all sorts of weird things here for protection. I keep the doors and windows salted."

"Because some things are so old and powerful that salt doesn't faze them." He sat back down to dress her cut. He barely cut her an amused smirk when she tucked the sheet under her arms while he made quick work of cleaning, disinfecting and bandaging the thin cut. "Better?"

"Maybe."

He watched her face. That expression. "What?"

"Where does Sam think you're spending your time?"

"Where Sam always thinks I'm spending my time."

"What I meant was… are there stories?" She raised an eyebrow. "Things I should be concerned about you sharing."

"I can be a gentleman." He protested.

"You're not overcompensating and spilling too many details?" Liz watched his face carefully.

He only smiled. "Like he would put any of it together with you." He expected the smack across the chest but she'd forgotten about her hand.

"Ah." Liz bit her lip against the pain. "Rule. No knives in bed."

"No kinks?"

She opened her mouth and then shut it. "No knives."

"So, I can fluster you. Useful information." He used the sheet to tug her closer as he aimed for her neck.

When his phone rang, he ignored it in favor of foreplay. Then her phone rang. Liz groaned but reached out to get it against Dean's protests. "Hello?"

"Hey, did you see Dean around tonight? Bobby said he was at the bar but I can't find him and no one knows where he went."

"No, not tonight." Liz shook her head and stilled Dean's chafing of her leg. "Did something happen?"

"Um, well. If you see him before I do, let him know that I got a call from New York. I should probably go."

"Okay. Is something wrong, Sam?"

Dean sat up when she said those words. He didn't ask any questions. He hopped off the bed and began getting dressed.

"A friend. She might be in trouble and I think we should leave tonight but I need Dean. He's been doing this a lot more lately. He just takes off in the middle of the night. He's starting to worry me."

"I'll go hit up a few places. I'm sure he didn't go far." Liz promised. She hung up feeling guilty. Dean only nodded to her anguished face. "He said New York. Some friend of his is in trouble."

"Yeah. Sam's got a girl in port up there." Dean shrugged. "I think she's perfect for him but… whatever."

Liz frowned at his choice of words and pulled a shirt over her head from the floor. "Is that what I am? A girl in this port?"

"Aw, man." Dean sank into a chair to yank his boots on. "We're not having this discussion, right now. If I know Sammy, he's halfway out the door. I gotta catch him before he takes off in my car."

They stared at each other in silence for a long while. Liz didn't meet his eyes when she did finally speak. "Don't do that to me. I'm saying that right now. I don't know where we're going but don't do that."

"I'd do anything for… you know… but not that."

"You're…" Liz started laughing.

"Oh, it's funny. Yeah."

"Meatloaf?" She dissolved into a deep bout of laughter. "Dean, go. We'll talk later." He gave her a grin but didn't move from his seat. "Go save Sam's girlfriend."

"Yeah, okay." He stood and pointed to the bed and then to her. "We're gonna finish this."

She nodded that she wasn't overly upset about the truncation in both their discussion and their previous activities. "Yes. We will."

--

Sam pressed the pedal down and still didn't seem to be going fast enough. "She sounded really upset. She could barely put her words together."

"Kind of like you, right now?" Dean asked as he flipped through his father's journal. Poltergeist lore was so boring. It never got exciting until the actual hunt.

"You're just mad cause you got dragged out of bed. I think Sarah's life is more important than you getting laid."

"Which is why I'm here right now. Chill out, dude."

"Something's not right." Sam flicked his eyes to the rearview mirror, then to his brother. "It's just… I don't know. I feel like something's really wrong about this. Something's not right."

--

Liz banged on Bobby's door as hard as she could; she had nearly sunk to the ground before he answered. "Something's not right."

"Lillian?" He reached down and hauled her into his house.

"Something's not right." She repeated as she slumped over the table. It had started an hour after Dean had left. Her breathing had changed without reason or warning. Then her vision started to come in and out. There was no pain but it wouldn't just come to her. It had taken all her strength to stumble over to Bobby's. Then it suddenly became clear when he set a glass of water in front of her. Her vision narrowed on the water. The glass slid away from her a few inches but didn't topple over the edge. Then her vision exploded and she fell to the floor.

Bobby watched her carefully as her body shook and her eyes darted from side to side. When she stopped, he put a bowl under her chin. "Lillian, what's happening?"

"It's a trap." She whispered. She burst into tears. "He's waiting. He found Sam's weakness."

"Who did?"

"Yellow eyes." She gasped out before she passed out.

--

Dean sat up immediately when he heard the voice on the line. He listened carefully and then slid his eyes to his brother. "Is she okay?"

"Yeah, she'll be fine. I'm keeping her in the house tonight. I'm staying up doing all kinds of research but you know that we never find anything on him, Dean."

"Yeah, I know. Sarah called us out on what sounded like a poltergeist. Maybe she's the bait and she doesn't even know it." Dean cursed under his breath. "Look, this thing is not beyond employing other spirits and demons to do his dirty work."

"I don't know anything with that kind of control."

"Bobby, sometimes it doesn't even ask before a demon gets a task put before him. I know what it's capable of but I don't know how to kill it."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Your priority is to take care of Liz. She's still unknown to the demon but I don't know for how long. Somehow it's going to find out that she's tipping us off. As far as research… if there's any lore on how any and I do mean any major demon was brought down…"

"I'll see what I can find."

"Okay. We're still heading up but… we'll keep in touch." Dean snapped his phone shut.

"What happened to Liz?" Sam whispered. His brother wasn't fond of most people but he knew that Liz was his pet. Fuel for the fire to keep hunting.

"After we took off, she went down. Major vision spell. Bobby was talking about all these freaky things happening while she was getting them. Glasses of water moving around, lights flickering, drawers opening and shutting, cabinet doors opening and banging shut. He thought he might have a poltergeist himself until he realized it was all her. She was seizing and I mean…"

"Is she okay?"

"Yeah. He's got her with him. Sam…" Dean looked to his brother. "This is a trap. We can't just barge in, half-cocked. We need to be careful."

"A trap? Sarah wouldn't…"

"No, but a badass demon would use her as bait."

"What kind of demon?"

"THE demon, Sammy. Our demon."

If there was any room between the floorboard and the gas pedal, it disappeared.

The next evening…  
(April 10, 2010)

Sam hugged Sarah as soon as he got out of the car. She stood in front of her father's auction house. She nodded to the front door. "I didn't know what to do. It never comes out in the day and I can't convince my father that anything is going on."

"Are you okay?" Sam looked her over and noticed the bump in her hairline.

"It threw a Mark Twain collection at me."

Dean shrugged. "So it was a book."

"I deal in authentic, Dean. It was several books." Sarah explained. "It's unlocked but I won't go in there. I can't leave because my father is in there working." She pulled a sheaf of papers from under her jacket. "These are all the new acquisitions since a few months before it started. I didn't know how long since it's been here. I tried going through the provenances but there were too many with shady histories."

"It's okay. We're on it." Sam nodded. "We'll stick around out here until you can convince him to go home for the night. Then we're going over to a hotel to do some research. Okay?"

"Yeah," She nodded shakily.

--

Liz swallowed down yet another glass of water. She had to pee all the time but she felt so thirsty since the night before. She rushed around to her tables; her necklace was full of charms. Bobby hadn't let her out of the house without promising to wear them all. She tried not to think about the remnants of her vision but every time she closed her eyes, she saw the yellow orbs so filled with hate and evil.

* * *

TBC 


	42. Chapter 41

Part 41 – A few days later…  
(April 13, 2010)

Dean picked up his head. He had passed out from the pain… which was still very much present but he had no clue how long he had been out. He took a breath that burned his lungs as he lifted his good arm to pull the iron poker from his shoulder. He could hear crying but he didn't know who was making the noise. He let out a scream of pain when he yanked out the rod holding him in place. Then he fell to the ground. His vision was blurred but he could make out his brother's prone form on the ground, Dad's journal clutched in his hand.

Nausea washed over him as he struggled to his feet. Choking it back down, he stumbled forward to the other figure not far away. Her chest was heaving with sobs. She was crying. What was her name? His head felt like it was full of lead. "Sarah." Right, that was her name.

She sobbed louder. Dean didn't swing his head around. That would be painful. "Sammy." No answer. "Sammy!"

"He's out cold. I've been crying for him forever." Sarah gasped out.

"I'm coming." He tried to blink his eyes clear but his vision didn't get much clearer. Maybe blood or dirt. When he knelt next to her, he swore. There was blood everywhere. "Oh, god."

"I can't move." She whispered. "I'm cold."

Dean took off his jacket and covered her body, then he found his phone. He dialed quickly, by feel rather than sight. He dealt with the operator while he tried to slow the bleeding but he knew he was close to passing out again. "Sarah. You still in there?"

"Is it gone?"

"Probably not. It's never gone." Dean swore again and looked to his brother. "Sammy!"

--

Liz found herself in Dr. Meyer's examination room for the second time. The paper gown rustled against the paper sheet on the table. She nodded absently to the questions. "Bobby was the one who saw it happen."

"He's sure it was a seizure."

"He's sure. He says that I was twitching and my eyes were rolling around in my head. I don't know if I've had them before. It turns out that the last time I was here wasn't the last time I had one of those absence seizures. You know… I think you remember."

"Yes, we had talked about the possibility of an absence seizure the last time you came in but all your neurology scans ran clean. We discounted that as a long term condition. Sometimes they just happen and never happen again." Dr. Meyer folded her hands over the file in her lap and took a moment to gather her thoughts. "You're not on any supplements or medications?"

"No. I haven't been in a long time."

"Okay. Let's assume that the first set of… instances were absence seizures. This instance is not because of the twitching and eye rolling. Can I ask what was going on before the occurrence?"

"No pain, really. It was… more like a panic attack. I managed to walk from my cottage to Bobby's and bang his door down before it hit me."

"Lillian." She took a breath and let it out slowly. "I promise you that this will not leave this room. I know what Marty's hobbies are and I'm fairly certain that you do, too. Was this… related to that?"

Liz looked away, unsure how to proceed. She felt her eyes fill with tears. "The other times too."

"It's worsening?"

"Yes. I've had the pain before. The headaches on the other ones. When I learned about the blackouts, I got concerned. This last one was big. The vision I had was big. It's not the only factor. I have… abilities that I keep under control, barely, and Bobby says they got away from me."

"Can you tell me? I might not be the one who can help you but if we can separate the natural and supernatural aspects, we might be able to determine which hands you need to be in."

"I only came in because Bobby was worried and he told Marty and Marty threatened to fire me if I didn't get some help."

"Then let me help."

--

Sam stared at the same spot on the wall of his hospital room. He had escaped with minimal damages. A bad concussion and some cracked ribs. He'd gotten off lucky. Dean's shoulder was ripped to hell and there were scrapes on his lungs that had to be monitored. Sarah was still in surgery. Her father had never had a chance. Sam was shaking.

"Dude?" Dean.

"Yeah?"

"See, I told you that he'd be awake."

"You still shouldn't be out of bed." The nurse told him; a pretty nurse who had clearly fallen under Winchester charms.

"Yeah. My brother's girlfriend is in surgery and I'm just supposed to sit in my bed while he's in here hating himself." Dean allowed himself to be rolled next to the bed. "You heard anything yet?"

"No." Sam didn't shake his head, didn't look at his brother. "It's my fault."

"Aw, man, come on." Dean watched the nurse go to make sure they wouldn't be overheard. "She'll be okay. She's got insurance and Daddy's name on the checking account. They'll make sure to save her, in case she wants to make a donation for saving her life."

The following night…  
(April 14, 2010)

Dean blinked at the doctor. "What?"

"I'm sorry." The doctor bowed his head and backed out of the room.

Sam fell back on his bed. "She died? They said she was stabilizing."

"Sammy, it's not your fault."

"Get us out of here." Sam clenched his eyes shut. "I'm never coming back here."

"Sammy."

"Get us out of here or I'm leaving without you."

24 hours later…  
(April 15, 2010)

Liz watched Sam walk around her and into her cottage, leaving her to help Dean out of the car and inside. It wasn't like him to ignore his brother's needs; his brother who was obviously having difficulties to begin with. "Dean, is he okay?"

"No. He's not." Dean admitted. He was tired; from the interlude with the Demon, from the hospital, from the drive. He was just tired; of hunting, of watching his brother so disconnected, of being alive without purpose aside from fighting evil. Looking at Liz reminded him that there was more to his existence. This little bit that he clung to, to get through the day. "I wouldn't have even brought him back here except that I need help. I can't…" He bowed his head. He was leaning more heavily on her that he would have liked. "I need help to deal with him."

"Okay." Liz nodded, struggling a little to support him. "Are you okay?"

"A little lightheaded, I lost a lot of blood. They gave me a transfusion but… it doesn't seem to be sticking."

"Okay." She helped him in and deposited him on her bed. She propped him up on all the pillows. "I'm guessing you left AMA."

"Maybe."

"You did. Idiot." She handed him a glass of water and over the counter pain killers. "Rest. Okay? No getting up." She handed him her book. "This will keep you occupied."

"Not another Oprah book."

"No. This one has pirates and prison breaks. You'll enjoy it."

"Fine." He nodded, holding the book to his stomach. "But after my nap."

Liz turned her attention to Sam, who stood staring out the window. "Sam?" He didn't turn. "Maybe you should get some sleep."

"I don't think I can." The tall and thin shadow of a man whispered.

"Have you slept at all?"

"No."

"Sam… I can't tell you anything that will make you feel better but you have to take care of yourself. I've still got Kyle's bed. Just lay down and rest. I'll take care of Dean."

Sam turned and seemed to see Dean for the first time. The bandages stained with blood, the bruises and cuts, the haunted eyes just watching. He started toward his brother but Liz stopped him. "But…"

"I've got him. You rest." She pushed him to the bed and made him sit.

"Dude, you're like a full foot taller than she is." Dean snorted as he tried to focus on the book, despite his statement he would nap first. He wanted to keep an eye on his brother while he could. "She's bossing you around. What a little bitch."

"Hey." Liz snapped her head around.

"He meant me. He called me a bitch." Sam waved off his brother.

"Oh." Liz still frowned at Dean.

"It's a thing." Sam shrugged and tried to settle himself on the bed.

"Ever since you cried like a little bitch when we watched The Land Before Time." Dean turned a page in the book.

"You cried too!"

"I did not cry. I was sad sure, but no tears fell from my eyes. You cried like a little bitch." Dean waved the book at Liz. "This is pretty interesting. I like bootleggers. Credit card defrauders of the 18th century. My heroes."

"It's not on the Oprah list." Liz told him as she took a seat on Sam's bed.

"Awesome." He turned his eyes back to the book.

"Sam, rest." Liz insisted

"I was seven, you jerk." Sam bit out.

"And I was 11. I didn't cry. Bitch." Dean called back, grateful to have a little piece of his brother back.

"Okay, enough." Liz told them. "Sam. Rest. We'll be here when you wake up."

"Yeah. This book is good." Dean turned another page.

"I'll take care of him, I promise." Liz covered him with an extra comforter. "It's okay to be sad, Sam. Just… rest."

He ended up dozing and catching the occasional turn of a page from the other bed. A comment here and there that normally would make him smack his brother. A snide comment from Liz that used to make him laugh but only made him want to sleep more. The time or two that he opened his eyes, Liz was cooking or giving Dean something to drink. Once, he almost thought they were snuggling on the bed but that was just the exhaustion making him see things that weren't there.

--

Liz let her fingers run through Dean's hair. He had his head on her shoulder as he struggled to finish the chapter he was reading. Sam had been out cold for hours. He had several days of sleep to catch up on. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I'm good." Dean lied.

"You have a hole in your shoulder." She pressed a kiss to his head.

"It's not the first time and it probably won't be the last." Dean shrugged and shut the book. "I am looking forward to the Nurse Liz treatment."

She laughed softly. "Oh yeah? I'll bet your twisted brain has naughty pictures for that image."

"Hell, yeah." As if there was any doubt he had the picture in his head already. "Naughty nurses' outfit with the uh… net leggings."

"Fishnets?"

"Those things." He readily agreed.

"I'll bet there are garter belts and thongs, too."

"No thongs. No bras. Just the garter belt and the stockings. The outfit has snaps like that uniform the waitresses at your dad's place wear."

She laughed. "I'd hate to break it to him that his idea of a waitress' uniform sends guys thoughts below the belt."

"Anyone ever rip it off you?" He was a little too eager for the information and so Liz had to torture him a bit.

"No, but uh… I did return to a shift or two with half the buttons undone… and probably more bra showing than he'd like." She giggled at the memory. She could still enjoy those memories.

"Max?" Dean asked uncomfortably.

"Yeah." She laughed lowly to herself. "The first time I contemplated losing my virginity, was in between the deep fryer and a plate of kielbasa while wearing that uniform."

"What?" He shut his eyes and let her talk.

"It started off as a talk. That chat. We had kissed before and he broke up with me. Then we were discussing whether or not we could still be friends and then he was… giving me visions in the kitchen while the restaurant was full of people and my parents were right upstairs."

"Giving you visions? Is that a euphemism?"

"Yes and no. He really did give me a vision that night. My first vision. It was also the same night that I had any hint what an orgasm might be like. I found out later that it could be even better than that." Liz sighed heavily and adjusted herself more comfortably without jostling him too much. "Of course, that was a lifetime ago."

"Is that your way of trying to make sure I'll still service you after hearing you gush about your husband?"

"Maybe."

"I can't do much of the work, right now." His eyebrow shot up in a suggestive peak though his eyes were barely open to slits.

"Not right now. Sam is right there." Liz scolded him lightly.

"I'm just saying. I like when you get so excited you have to grab the headboard."

"Shut up." She blushed wildly but didn't make any move to climb off the bed. The night glares from the window were a good place to focus her eyes though.

The silence stretched out between them. It made Dean think about the conversation he'd left during. "Liz?"

"Yeah?"

"You're not just a girl in port."

"Okay." She shut her eyes to absorb the admission.

"Liz?"

"Yeah."

"I almost died… again."

"I know."

"Sammy could have…" He took a breath. "He was unconscious even after I came to and he was still mobile when I passed out. If I had come to sooner, maybe she…"

"Sh." Liz cut off his words. "It's not your fault." Tears sprung to her eyes. "It's not. He's just stronger than you… but you'll kill him. You're smart. You'll find a way. You just have to find the right way."

--

Sam took the cup of coffee when it was offered. Dean was asleep. He thought he preferred it that way. He loved his brother. He couldn't handle the morning with the jokes and the comments, though. He just wasn't ready. Liz was up early or late. He couldn't tell. She sipped her coffee and picked at a plate of eggs and biscuits, just the same as him. "I slept, kind of. Did you?"

"Who can sleep when a drugged up Dean is so much fun?" She winked at him.

"Is he okay?"

"He's worried about you but that's not news."

"I guess not."

"He thought maybe you loved her."

"I thought maybe I could but… I didn't stop hunting for her and I still got her killed."

"The demon did that, Sam. Not you." Liz wiped at her eyes. "Kivar killed my husband. Not me, not you, not Michael, not Dean. The demon killed her. Not you."

"Because of me, because of her involvement with me."

She stared at him for the longest time, her eyes shining. "You are something special, Sam. You have a gift or curse. Whatever. You have knowledge of this world which saves lives that don't matter much to you. The few you do care about, they get taken from you. It sucks. It really does. It's not fair. You don't have the luxury of 'what if'. What if you didn't know? All the people you saved and more would have died. What if you had told someone? You would have been locked up. It's not a fair world. It's not a fair existence. I live with my world the same as you live with yours. 'What if' is too heavy a price." She wiped at her eyes for a second. "I would love to have my husband back but it's not possible. He died. He died saving me and everyone from an alien who would have loved nothing more than to destroy the earth… and just because Max was on it. No other reason. I don't pretend to know the Yellow-Eyed Demon's reasons. I couldn't fathom why he would do what he's done to you… but he's doing it."

"You're lucky. Your drama is over."

"No, it's not, Sam." She put her cup down. "My drama is that now I have visions connected to you. Even if my visions had stopped when Max died, I would still know this other world existed. Where demons, ghosts and vampires walk the earth in patterns that I'm not trained to see. Maybe you don't want it. It's a burden. You have it. I'm begging you not to give up."

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Because. This was a cheap shot. A cheap, painful, shot. He's running scared of you and your brother. He's losing control of you, I think." Liz sighed and tried not to remember the places her vision had taken her to. "Why take out a girl you've barely seen? You cared about her but you didn't have a relationship with her." She placed her hands on the table, leaning forward to make him meet her eyes. Her arms shook but her voice never did. "He killed her to weaken you. To bring you down. You can't let him win. He can have the battles along the way but you have to win the war. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, sir." Sam blinked at her. "You sounded just like my dad, just then."

"I know." Liz took a breath and pulled away from the table. "I do that sometimes. I don't know why."

"Wait? You channel my dad?" Sam rose and followed her around the room. "You've done it before?"

"Yes, no… Once." She looked up at him, her eyes wide. "It scares me. He was a good man but… I don't know why. I only met him for like a minute. I don't understand why I'm connected to him. Don't tell Dean what I did."

"Okay."

"He misses your dad so much. I couldn't tell him that I could do that."

"He always was Dad's favorite." Sam shrugged.

"Your dad didn't have favorites. He would have preferred fighting with Dean over you. Anything not to look at Dean." Liz whispered, not sure where exactly the thoughts were coming from. Vaguely, she recalled something about the Winchesters occupying the cottage once upon a time. For all she knew, their spiritual fingerprints were all over the place.

"What?" He frowned at her.

"She might have died in your room, Sam but it's Dean that always reminded him of your mother." She lowered her voice when Dean stirred. "Just promise me that you won't give up or give in, Sam."

"Okay." Sam nodded. "Mind if I use your shower?"

"Go for it." She nodded. She watched Dean's sleeping figure until long after Sam had disappeared into her tiny bathroom. Dean was actually sleeping. She could tell that it wasn't the earlier drug-induced sleeping that had him shifting every few minutes. He was dead to the world and if it weren't for the constant rise and fall of his chest, she might have thought he was dead.

TBC


	43. Chapter 42

Part 42 – a day later…  
(April 17, 2010)

Sam let Liz comb the scabs out of his hair. He'd sat on the extra bed feeling sorry for himself. Lucky to be alive wasn't a phrase he'd use. He felt like shit. He winced as the teeth came too close to the less healed regions. "Maybe I should just shave it off."

"Nope. You wouldn't be Sam without all this hair." She teased him lightly. "I don't want to be your Delilah. For all I know, your strength is in this gorgeous hair."

He had to smile a bit at that. Then he glanced over at his brother, who was sleeping off pain killers, hugging a book with a red cover. "I can't believe you got him to read a book for fun."

"We have an agreement. He has to finish the book before he gets to ask if he can get out of bed without an escort." She shrugged at him but decided she had gotten all the bits out. "I think they used your hair as stitches, just kind of tied it in a big knot over the gash-"

"Liz?"

"Yeah?"

"I need some time alone. I don't want him to worry about me."

"Are you going to hole up at the hotel?" Even as the words were out of her mouth, she knew that wasn't it.

"I need to go pay some respects. He needs to heal up. I hate to dump him on you. I should really be fixing him up but I'm no good to anyone right now."

"I can handle Dean." Liz promised. "You have to promise to check in."

"Okay. Try to keep him from finding out as long as possible."

"Okay."

"I'm sorry, Liz, but I gotta go."

"I know." She hugged him. "You gonna take the car?"

"I need to get away from him. Taking the car would definitely send him chasing after me." He tossed a rueful smile in his brother's direction.

"I'll do what I can to make him understand when he realizes you're gone."

"Thanks."

--

Dean sat up rather unsteadily as Liz put clean gauze in place of the soaked ones. "I need a shower. A real shower with a pulsating showerhead. A steam shower sounds so damn good."

"Not until the skin closes over." She chided lightly. "How long did the doctor want you to stay?"

"Two weeks."

"And to rest?"

"Another month."

"Okay. I will help you to the bathroom and the shower stuff but you gotta promise me that you'll stay in bed. If I catch you sitting up, I'll move you to the hotel and forget about you."

"No naughty Nurse Liz?"

"Right. I won't even think about fulfilling your sick fantasies." She taped the gauze in place and pushed him back down on the pillows. "In fact, if you get up… I'll tell you all about how I plan to pleasure myself in the shower and make sure you can't enjoy it."

"You're a tyrant. You're cruel. I think that's why I stick around." He flashed her a brilliant smile and raised his eyebrows. "If I'm a good boy and stay in bed, what's my reward?"

"I will consider the Naughty Nurse Liz fantasy."

"Sold."

"You know, usually after surgery, the doctor insists on limiting sexual activity. It's barely been a week."

"It's just a torn muscle."

"Sex is the one activity that involuntarily uses all the muscles in the body. I don't think you've been cleared."

"Aw, come on."

"Let's consider it, when you don't need my help to go to the bathroom."

"Then I should tell you that I've been milking the situation and I've never really needed you to help me."

"You're so full of it." She rose to throw away the old bandages and the trash from the new ones.

Dean cast his gaze to the other bed. It lay empty. "Where'd Sammy go?"

"He predicted that you'd become unbearable. He's going get his head together."

"Oh. So long as he doesn't forget to come inject me with some testosterone every once in a while." He joked then looked at her seriously. "He's doing okay?"

"Yeah. He'll be fine. He just… he needs to deal on his own, Dean."

"Just… keep an eye on him, for me."

"Why? I thought you didn't need me."

"I was just trying to get some play but you're a tyrant."

"Need another pain killer?" She filled his water glass and grabbed the bottle from the table. He hadn't said anything but from the look on his face, he had needed it an hour ago.

"Sammy's gonna know about us if you keep babying me like this." He held the pills in his hand and rolled them between his fingers. "You keep hovering and I'll pull you right down on me."

She gingerly poked his shoulder. He winced. "Maybe not?"

"Fine." He tossed back the pills with some water. "Just stop wearing those jeans. They give me thoughts."

"What?" She stood up and turned around to look at her jeans. "These old things?"

"Yes, those. They're like paint. A guy could die just staring at you."

"I could take them off." She reached for the button, turning to him fully.

"Look, vixen. Don't make me get off this bed."

Five days later…  
(April 22, 2010)

Dean watched as she made herself comfortable with a dark sort of yearning in her eyes. He had to laugh. She scoffed at him. She frowned but the look in her eyes didn't change. "What are you laughing at?"

"You."

"Why?"

"Because you always do this and I find it funny." He cleared his throat and motioned to her position on the bed. "Right now, you're acting like a sex kitten but once you get off, you'll turn shy and timid. I think it's adorable." Moving quickly, he trapped her beneath him. "I'm curious as to why that is."

"I don't even know what you're talking about."

"You flirt hardcore until we fuck. Then afterwards, you get shy and you cover up, like you're embarrassed. Why?"

"I don't know." She frowned, her fingers sliding up his chest, avoiding his bandages. "And don't use that word."

"Fuck?"

"Yes. I don't like it."

"You're a prude in wolf's clothing."

She shrugged. "I don't know why."

"Don't get me wrong, I find it very hot. You don't confuse me often but this switch-around throws me."

"Get off. You can't roll around until you're completely healed." She nudged him until he lay on his back once more. "I believe that was the whole purpose in the Dean-stays-in-bed plan. Don't make me revoke your rewards."

"Rewards… yes. I like the rewards."

She slid across his body, careful to keep her weight off his injured shoulder. "You stopped bleeding on the sheets but that doesn't mean all the insides are healed yet. You'll just have to let me take over for a while."

"I am not complaining."

"Not right now…"

--

Dean opened his eyes. It was dark. He awkwardly yanked on some shorts to make his way to the bathroom. He frowned at the empty bed across the cottage. When he looked out the window, he could see the Impala right where he'd parked it a week ago. Surely Sam would have taken it to get around. Making sure that Liz was asleep, he pulled on a shirt, pants and yanked on his boots. He jogged over to the hotel, a little out of breath from being confined to bed for so long without exercise aside from the horizontal. He nodded to Montoya, the proprietor who seemed to be sleeping awake. "My brother in his room?"

Montoya looked annoyed at being awake in the first place. The question seemed to challenge his intelligence and so he refused to answer it.

"Tall dude. Long hair. Pouting, probably. Looks like me but despite his claims is not more handsome than me."

"Man, I'm tired. I don't appreciate your practical jokes." Montoya blinked at him slowly.

"Just point me to his room."

"Man, he's not here. He took off. Saw him get on a bus like a week ago."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Yeah. That Lillian chick from Marty's took him over there."

"Whoa, whoa. Whoa. Lillian took Sam to the bus station a week ago?"

"Something like that."

"Fuckin'…" Dean raised his hands to Montoya. "Fine. I'll go ask her."

"If you wake her up, she'll kick your ass." Montoya offered lamely as he let himself fall back into his waking sleep.

Dean muttered under his breath the whole way back. Throwing open his car door, he discovered that all of his brother's things were gone. He was definitely not on a jaunt. He was gone. There were no pending hunts and he couldn't see Sammy in the right frame of mind to take down any spirit, much less a monster or minor demon. He didn't bother to be quiet when he entered the cottage and began tossing his things in his bag. Liz sat up, yanking the sheet with her. "Dean, what's going on?"

"Where did he go?" Dean demanded.

"What are you talking about?"

"Sam. Where did he go?"

"Dean, I told you."

"And Montoya told me that you took Sam to the bus station. Just cut the crap and tell me where."

Liz scrambled out of bed and yanked on a shirt. "Dean… come on. He just needs some space."

"You don't get to make that decision. He's not in his head. He's dangerous like this. He's wide open to demonic possession and you put him on the fucking bus." He roared at her.

"Don't yell at me." She shouted back. "He was begging for some peace of mind. He needed to get away."

"Where?" He towered over her. "Don't make me do this the hard way. You've been sapping my strength intentionally. Maybe you're a succubus."

"Name calling. Real mature, Dean."

"That's what all this has been about, hasn't it. Trying to keep me from finding out that Sam's been running around and getting into deep shit by himself. How am I supposed to protect him if I don't know where he is?"

"Dean… he's a big boy. He can take care of himself."

"I swore I'd always take care of him and you just… Where did he go?"

"He'll be fine."

"That's my call, not yours. Where did he go?"

Liz gave up and started gathering his things to toss in his bag. "A couple of places." Dean only nodded and shoved his clothes, clean and dirty, into the bag. He hunted around for his weapons. They invariably got tucked all around when he stayed with her. "That's not what it's all been about. You know that."

"Maybe if I wasn't being taunted and tempted, I would have noticed sooner but that was the point, right?"

"You need to rest still. You're not healed. Tossing your things around like that is only going to aggravate your shoulder." She sank into a chair to watch him. He wasn't listening anymore and all she felt was tired. Frowning, she tucked her legs underneath her and watched him as he angrily shoved his things in his bag. "It's not like I could have stopped him, Dean."

"You could have tried."

"We talked. I understood his need. He's a grown man. He can go where he likes. He's also a foot taller than me, your observation. I can only bully him so far. He doesn't need you to yell at him when you find him." Liz pressed but she didn't know if he was going to give her any leeway. "When you find him… just remember he needs you to be his brother. Not his father. Not his platoon leader. Just be there and don't try to fix it. You can't."

"Since when are you the expert on my brother?"

"I'm not claiming to be, Dean." She got up and began packing up some food. She held it out to him just as he was trying to heave his bag up on his shoulder. "Make sure you eat to keep up your strength."

His face almost gave something away but he just looked at it and walked out the door. He shoved his bag in the back and fished around his jacket pockets for his keys.

"You're not healed yet, Dean." She protested weakly. The longer he stayed quiet, the worse she felt. "Dean."

"Where?" He stared right through her.

"Sacramento and Lawrence. I don't know which one he was going to first." She sat down on her stoop in her T-shirt with the food in her lap. "Dean."

"You know… I get enough shit about spending too much time in bed from him. I don't need anyone using it against me to keep me from my brother. He's all that I've got. I swore to my father that I would always be there to protect him. That I would be there when the big shit goes down and I can't do that if you're riding me to hell and back while he's out there and vulnerable."

"I'm sorry. We didn't… It's just… Dean…"

Dean climbed into the Impala and had it speeding along the freeway in no time at all. He spent the first twenty minutes cursing under his breath, then the next twenty rubbing at his eyes to keep from falling asleep. The following hours were spent ignoring his stomach growling. All of it was spent trying not to think about anything but getting to his stupid little brother before a demon took a bite out of him.

* * *

TBC 


	44. Chapter 43

Part 43 – A day later…  
(April 23, 2010)

"I don't want to talk about it, Stan." Liz bit out as she waited her tables. He kept following her around.

"You look like death warmed over. Something's been going on. I know that I've been a little absentee but… come on. Lillian." Kyle ducked around a big burly guy and followed her behind the bar.

"Look. I was just the host to the most whiny Winchester ever. They're all gone now. I'll be getting sleep again. I'm fine." She stared at him.

"And that's how I know that you're not."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Come here." He motioned her into his arms. She reluctantly walked into them and felt marginally better than before. "Dad's coming up. It'll be like Roswell here for a while. If he sees you looking like this, he won't let it drop. So tell me that you're really okay and there's not a guy I have to go beat down."

"No, I'm fine. Tired." She relaxed into him and rested her head on his shoulder.

"What did the doctor say?" He whispered into her hair.

"There's nothing wrong with me." Liz stood up straight. "Who told you?"

"Betty Lou's aunt saw you in Baxter at Dr. Meyer's."

"I had a… mixed episode. Vision and alien fireworks." She waved off his concerned face. "Talk to Bobby. I'm sick of talking about it."

"But you're okay?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. You need me. Call me. Okay?"

"I will."

--

Dean cursed as he paced in front of the Impala. He didn't want to go up there but Sammy wasn't coming back down. Finally, he sucked it up. He picked his way through the plots to the gravestone that his brother knelt in front of. "Dude. You're supposed to be in bed."

"And you were supposed to be moping in the hotel. I had to find out from fucking Montoya that you skipped town without me." Dean barked out but looked contrite when his eyes fell on his mother's name on the stone. She would have scolded him thoroughly for the language, the tone and the direction to which it was all spent. He had a vague memory of being scared when Dad had hit his thumb with a hammer. First he was scared that Dad was hurt, then scared by the very loud and angry curses that had flown out of his mouth. Then he got scared when his mother had taken a tone to Dad about the cursing in front of the child. Mom had definitely been the boss of the house.

"I just needed some space, man." Sam sniffed and kept his eyes focused on the letters. Mary Winchester. "I always wonder if maybe she knew something. Or if she understood when she died. I know that she hung around the house and kept the other spirits in check but did she ever really know why?"

"Dude, we don't even know why." Dean shoved his hands in his pockets and regretted it. His shoulder burned something fierce. "We know what did it. Where it happened. How it happened. When it happened. Why is the only thing we don't know."

"Liz didn't call me to tell me you were coming."

"Yeah, well. She can take a flying leap. It was a shitty thing to do." Dean lowered his gaze to the ground. After that succubus bit, Liz's fight had pretty much died. She had tried talking to him and Dean had ignored it. His brother was safe. He was mad at him but he was waxing whiny-bitch over their mother's grave. What could he really do?

"I asked her to. I knew you needed rest and someone to look after you. I'm just… not the best person to be around right now."

"You let me know, Sammy. If you need time, you let me know. You don't sneak out the back and…" Dean trailed off. He was an ass. Sam would never have told Liz to sleep with him just to keep him in bed where he belonged. Sam didn't even know they were sleeping together. Liz was… fuck it all! "I'll be in the car."

"Dean?" Sam turned as his brother started to go. He knew that set in his brother's jaw. He was pissed. "It's not her fault. I asked her to keep you safe for me."

"I'm the protector here. It's my job." Dean whirled on his brother. "Dammit, Sammy! If you lose me, then I've lost you. I can't keep up with you all the time, especially when I have a hole in my body."

"Yeah, okay, Dad." Sam muttered to himself.

"You're damn right I sound like Dad. He gave me the same speech. I never listened to him like I should have. Maybe if I had, he wouldn't have ditched me when he caught onto the Demon's trail. Maybe I would know what he knew about it. I was a fuck up for a son and now I'm paying the price."

The younger Winchester blinked rapidly at his brother. "You're the fuck up? Dad hated me."

"No. Dad loved you. He was proud of you. I know cause he always bitched about you. I stuck around but I always had to hear how I needed to watch myself. I followed his every fucking order and I still wasn't near enough for him." Dean fought against the swelling in his eyes. "You ever wonder why I was so damned obedient, Sammy? I was a good soldier and I got treated like one. Not a son, a soldier. Never eyeballing or complaining, just doing and waiting for commendations that never came."

"Dude, calm down." Sam got to his feet. "You were his favorite."

"No, I wasn't. I was just the one he could depend on." Dean turned and stormed back to the car. "Get in the car."

Liz's words echoed in Sam's ears as he took one long last look at his mother's marker and then followed his brother back to the car. He tossed his bag in the back and retrieved the box from under the seat. He flipped through it as Dean drove them out of Lawrence in silence.

Mom. One picture. Green eyes. Tea blonde. Fair. Sam lifted his eyes to his brother and finally understood what Liz had been trying to say. What his father was guiding Liz to say. John Winchester loved his boys more than life. He didn't know how to show them after his wife had died. The harder he was, the more he loved. The bigger the outburst, the more the concern. That was what Dean had seen. He had taken the criticisms to heart where Sam had used them to fuel his anger. But it was right there the whole time. His eyes flicked from the picture to his brother, back and forth. "You look a lot like her."

"Yeah. I get that."

"Sorry." Sam flinched at the tone. That was a truly rare tone and he'd never had it aimed at him before.

"I used to hear it a lot before we left Lawrence. It's a kick to the gut every time. You think you get used to it… but every time someone says it, it's like being sucker punched all over again." Dean's voice was raspy. From yelling, from worrying, from weakness. "They all think it's a compliment. That you should take joy in looking so much like your dead mother. It hurts more. More than they can know it does."

"You were a kid."

"It still hurts. You think I can look in a mirror and not see her?"

"Dean…"

"I don't like to think about it, Sam. I know. All the things you think you're learning. I know them. None of it comforts me." He sniffed. "We used to tuck you in together. Dad would work late, so me and Mom would do it. Sometimes, if we were lucky, he'd come home in time to wash up and catch us before we turned out the lights. That's what happened that night. It was normal. He came home in time so we could do it together. All three of us, tucking you in. Then me. I got tucked in. I woke up when I heard the scream. I saw more than Dad thought I saw."

"You saw?" Sam whispered.

"I walked out of my room. All the noise was coming from your room. I saw the flames. I saw her nightgown on the ceiling. Then Dad was coming at me with you." Dean braced himself against the pain in his body. "I could still see her. Over his head. No screaming, just burning. I ran away from that as much as I ran because Dad told me to."

"Man…I-"

"I take my promises, seriously. I always would promise her that I'd be a good brother. I always promised Dad that I would look out for you. I even went to Stanford a few times to check up on you. To make sure that you were safe. Even after we stopped talking."

"Dude."

"I'm getting old, dude. Too old for this shit. I'm 31 and I'm still chasing your ass all over the place because I promised that I would get there in time." Dean felt his throat closing up on him, his eyes stung but he was too tired to even work up tears.

"Dad gave his soul for you."

"Yeah. Thanks a lot, Dad. Not that I don't enjoy being here but maybe the more experienced hunter should have stayed." Dean was never more grateful to put Lawrence in the rearview. "We were painful for him to look at. I feel like he escaped us. So he wouldn't have to deal with us anymore."

"I sometimes hated him but I never thought that way. You say you're too old for this… think about Dad. He was… over 50?"

"I know."

Sam's phone rang. It broke the mood and it ended the conversation. "Yeah?"

"Sam? Is Dean with you?"

"Yeah, he found me." Sam slid a look to his brother, who had visibly stiffened.

"Tell him… I don't know… he's pissed."

"Mostly at me, I think."

"No, he made himself quite clear. Just…"

"Okay. I will."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Head's clear as it's going to be."

"Don't rush yourself. Grieve."

"Okay. Don't take anything he said personally. I'll take care of it."

"Just, leave it alone, Sam. Whatever was said, that's between me and him." She hung up without giving him a chance to counter.

Sam looked at his brother. "What did you say to her? When last I saw, you were pretty damn content to have her wait on you, hand and foot."

Dean set his jaw and didn't say a word. It was too late to take back his words and the things he'd meant when he'd said them. He thought about the look on her face when he'd driven off. He pulled over. "You drive. I need sleep."

A week and a half later…  
(May 2, 2010)

Dean shoved his clothes from his bag to the washing machine. He only just caught the book before it fell in. The red cover having caught his eye. He yanked off his shirt and shoved it in the washer. If it weren't for the little old lady in the next row, he'd toss his jeans in too. He did yank off his boots and toss his socks in though. Poured double the soap since his clothes had been packed tight in the bag with blood stains on most of them. He set the book on top of the washer and pretended not to care about it.

The bathroom was dingy but it would work. He sponge-bathed around the stitches using the lukewarm water and a paper towel. Carefully, he used his pocketknife to remove all the stitches up front. He could get Sam to do the back later. He would shower later but when he had clean clothes once more. When he returned to move his wash to the dryer, the old lady walked up and handed him the book. "Some hoodlum tried to use it to make spit balls. Watch your things better."

"Yeah." Dean stared at the book in his hand. He moved his stuff to the dryer and stared at it. He had been yelling at her and accusing her of awful things and she was fixing him food to eat and packing the book so he could finish it. He'd been halfway through. He had wanted to know what would happen next. It wasn't his normal reading material but it had impressed him from the beginning. They had talked about it a bit between bouts of passion fueled fucking. He didn't care that she didn't like the word. He did. It fit.

Two pages. He managed to read two pages before he had his phone in hand. He dialed and let it ring once but hung up. When his phone rang a minute later, he didn't answer it. When the voicemail beeped, he checked it.

"Dean… Dean, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to… but you had no right to… I hate it when you're like this. God! Never mind." The way her voice went from pleading to angry to exasperated actually made him smile. When he looked up, the old lady was staring at him with THAT look on her face. He hated nosey old ladies and their stupid looks. The ones that said they knew what was going on even though they didn't know the whole story.

"Was it a gift?" He shrugged at the question. "Hoping you'd lose it so you'd forget about the girl?"

"Maybe."

"Girl won't be forgotten?"

"Never." Dean laughed to himself. So maybe the old lady knew a thing or two about a thing or two.

"Ah, to be young and in love."

"I wouldn't say love."

"Ah, even better." She put the last of her folded laundry in a basket and picked it up. "I won't even tell the manager you were walking around bare foot in here because you have that look on your face."

Dean held the door open for her and she pinched his cheek in passing. He stared at the cover on the book for a long time while he paced the row of dryers. He shoved his feet into his boots and yanked his clothes out of the dryer, mostly dry but some things a little wet. He didn't know what he was doing or why. He just had an urgency to get back to the hotel and to shower, regardless of the healing wound.

--

Sam woke to his phone ringing at him. Dragging his phone to his ear, he was barely able to catch the ring before it went to voice mail. "Hello."

"Hey birthday boy."

"Hi, Liz."

"How are you guys doing?"

"Good, considering."

"Is Dean there?"

"You didn't try his phone."

"He's not answering his phone."

"Dean…" Sam rolled over. His brother was gone. He sat up to find a note and coffee on the table. "He's out, I guess."

"Okay… don't tell him I called, though."

"Yeah, he'll talk when he's ready to apologize."

"I guess. So you're okay?"

"Yeah. Gonna take it easy today and not let him bug me too badly."

"Good. Enjoy your day."

--

Liz picked around in the garage waiting for Kyle. Bobby slid out from under a car. "Lil… hand me that wrench over there."

She picked it out of the box and handed it over. She was overwhelmed with a sense of déjà vu though she had no idea where it stemmed from. She knelt on the ground and rummaged through the toolbox. They weren't in the right places. She handed Bobby the tools as he asked but replaced them in the spaces that were a better fit.

Bobby rolled out from under the car and glanced into the box. "You been hanging out with them Winchesters too much. You're starting to do things their way."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"That Dean can do that to a toolbox blindfolded. John had that one trained for a garage since birth. Can't ever get that boy to settle down, though. He's got an eye for an engine." Bobby waved her off. "He's got a gift with a shotgun, too. It's a tossup which he should be doing with his life but I ain't his daddy and his daddy wanted him to hunt…"

"So that's what he does, huh." Liz hid a smile. Then she gazed into the toolbox. It was orderly and efficient. Everything within easy reach. "It just made sense."

"That's what John used to say. I think he had an obsessive compulsive thing with tools and guns. I take care of my guns but I don't LOVE my guns the way ol' John did." Bobby heaved himself up off the ground.

"How did you meet him?" She asked, curious.

"Long time ago. He was on a hunt and he got referred to me. Stashed his boys here while he went. Came back quicker than he thought and found some uncharted hunting ground in the area. This…" Bobby nodded to himself sadly. "This state is virtually demon free because of ol' John. I'm a librarian. I hunt sometimes, used to hunt more. I exorcise but I'm a weekend kind of guy. John was the real deal. He had fuel for the fire. I… happened upon it years before he did. We thought alike, being in the Marines and all… but John would've been a lifer if not for his wife." He laughed. "Them kids were goofy, I'll tell you. Dean was the biggest ham that you have ever seen. Obedient when ordered but once he got the call to stand down, a clown. He still is, I guess. Now, Sam. Hasn't changed bit. Still the same bookworm. Still spouting off after his brother. Still angry at the world. But he's got a good head. That boy can tear your heart out with a look. Then fill it back up with all those helpful deeds he does."

"Aw, Bobby, you have a heart."

"No, I don't." He quipped back quickly. "Come on. Stan's gonna be busy a while and if you're gonna do one kit, you're gonna do them all. It'll teach all these boys how to keep a proper tool box."

--

Sam had just finished off his coffee when the door burst open to admit his brother. Before he could even greet him, Dean had tossed his bag on the bed and disappeared into the bathroom. Snorting, Sam just stared at the door for a long while… then he eyed the bag on the bed. He was nearly through when he heard the water shut off. Cursing, he returned to his seat as if he hadn't been doing a thing. The elder Winchester emerged with his hair plastered flat on his head. "Feel better?"

"Maybe." Dean shrugged and held onto the towel knotted at his waist. Then he glared at the neat piles of clothes on the bed. "Dude, you folded my clothes?"

"I was bored and you were taking forever." Then he glanced at his brother's disbelieving face. "Okay, so I was trying to gauge how bad you were bleeding by the blood stains on your clothes."

"Stopped bleeding two weeks ago. I don't know that I could lift the shot gun right now but I can handle a .45." He tested his shoulder by lifting his arm straight out to the side. "Must be healing pretty fast cause it doesn't even hurt."

"But it's weak?"

"Ah, to be expected."

"Okay." Sam nodded. His brother was approaching honest for once. So he'd take what he could get.

"So, birthday dude. What's the plan?"

"To celebrate without you. My birthday wish is for you to sit on your ass all day." Sam pulled on his shoes. "I'm going. All day. I'll send you food every once in a while… if I remember."

"Ha. Ha." Dean shot him a look as he got dressed. "Maybe, though."

"Really?"

"Maybe." He was tired. He was weak. He needed to get strong again and sooner rather than later. "I'm getting old or something. Going out to a bar tonight is just unthinkable."

"You are getting old."

"You're not that far behind me." Dean warned as he sank down and contemplated putting his boots on.

"Whatever, man. It's my day and today… I don't have a brother. I don't have a career hunting down monsters. I'm just 27, today." Sam waved as he exited the room.

Dean stared at the boots and then just lay back in bed. He picked up his phone and tried it again. This time, it went straight to voicemail. "Hey… Look…" He sighed. He should have rehearsed it. "I didn't mean what I said… and thanks for the book. I'll make sure you get it back."

Shutting off the ringer, he picked up the remote. Monster Movie Marathon. "Awesome." It was two hours later when his phone chirped out the signal that he had a voice message. Debating for a moment, he finally picked it up.

"Don't worry about the book. I'm sorry for lying but… whatever."

Dean tapped his phone against his chin for a long moment while Godzilla demolished Tokyo. He squinted as he used his thumbs to send her a text. _"__Message received and ignored__."_

A moment later, he got a text back. _"You're a jerk."_

_"A jerk you can't keep your hands off."_

_"Must I repeat myself__"_

_"Are we cool?"_

_"Not really."_

Dean had to think about that while the poor sap on TV got bit by a nasty looking wolf. He debated with himself so long that she got frustrated.

_"You had no right to make those assumptions about me. I lied about where Sam was and that was it. You're the one who turned me into a monster as an excuse to run out the door. I'm not that kind of person."_

_"No. You're not."_ He stared at the phone and waited for the answering text. It never came. Not through the end of the werewolf movie or the Frankenstein flick or the two cheesy vampire movies after that. _"Liz? I'm sorry."_

_"Yeah. I get that."_

"Well, fuck." He swore aloud, tossing his phone across the room. He winced at the suspicious sounding crack but he was even more tired than he had been when he'd laid down.

* * *

TBC 


	45. Chapter 44

Part 44 – A month later…  
(June 30, 2010)

Liz rolled her eyes at the guys. They were being guys but she was working. It was a forced show. It wasn't like she could just leave. Kyle fit right in with the guys. They let him be the guy he had been long before aliens had ever been a factor. He took comfort in that ability. She poured him another beer and suddenly felt ill. He saw the look on her face and rushed just as quickly to the bathroom with her. Kyle followed her in and held her hair back until the heaves subsided. "You okay?"

"Yeah… I'm just… maybe I have a bug."

"You didn't eat those cookies Billy made, did you?"

"Oh crap." Liz moaned. "Where they bad?"

"Bobby was muttering something about demon poisoning. I don't know."

"OH…"

"Whoa, that's gross." Kyle tried not to look as she continued to heave. "Yeah, Damon got like this too. Billy shouldn't be allowed near a kitchen."

"I'm okay." Liz gulped and tried to stand up. Kyle handed her a wad of toilet paper and kicked the handle for her. He hovered while she washed up. "I'll be okay."

"All right. Sure. I'm gonna hang around, though."

"Okay." Liz nodded and tried to walk back out to the bar. She felt queasy but it all disappeared when the door opened.

--

"How's the shoulder?"

"It's fine." Dean rolled his eyes.

"You asked me fifty times a day how my leg was. I'm gonna go all Dad on your ass if I find out you're not okay."

"Yeah, whatever. It was just an annoying ghost. No big." Dean waved him off.

"The timing is off." Sam commented when the Impala started up.

"Good catch. We'll pull in the next town over."

"You're not taking her to Bobby's? I thought he was the only one you trusted with your baby."

"It's just a timing chain. I can do that anywhere." Dean evaded the real reason he didn't want to drive across two states to go to Bobby's. She didn't want him there. He had been stupid and accused her of being a demon of all things. Called her lovemaking strength-sapping feedings… it's a miracle she hadn't kicked his ass right then and there.

"Okay…" Sam made a face but didn't push it. It had become a habit over the past few years to just pull into South Dakota when the Impala needed any little thing, even a timing chain.

"Seattle's here, right?"

"Yeah." Sam blinked at his brother.

"Space Needle? Supposed to be cool?"

"And you have to book tickets or reservations in advance."

"So." Dean pointed to the phone. "Make it happen. I want to see it."

"What is with you man?" Sam stared at his brother who was, heading for Seattle after all. "First the Grand Canyon on your birthday, then it was uh… Riverwalk on Cinco de Mayo. We drove overnight and you were sadly disappointed, if I recall."

"I just didn't think all that fuss was about a stinkin' mall."

"There's a river inside the damned mall, Dean. It wasn't just the mall... You know what? Forget it. What's after this? Rushmore?"

"Never seen that." Dean narrowed his eyes at the road as he considered it. "Is it supposed to be cool?"

"Giant presidents' heads in a cliff face."

"Really? That's stupid." Still. Never seen that. "Where is that?"

"South Dakota."

"Nah, pass. Niagara, though. Last time we drove through, I didn't get to see the falls." Dean caught his brother's disbelieving face. "What?"

"Since when do you give a crap?"

"Since I'm 31 and I've been to every state in the continental U.S. and haven't seen any of the sights… although… were you with us when we hit the Guadalupes hunting for that Chupacabra?"

"No." Sam shook his head.

"I was skimming along this rock wall when I turned and looked. There were like old worms and weird ass fossils in there. Turns out, the whole thing used to be underwater. Like a dinosaur's Jacuzzi or something."

"Okay. Sure. Dean." Sam shook his head at his brother.

"Look. The jobs are few and far between these days. I can't do a whole lot until I get my strength up. I want to have some fun."

"Fine." Sam sat for a moment and then turned to his brother. "How did you kill the Chupacabra?"

"It was awesome. We chased it out to the Salt Flats and then Dad…"

--

Jim looked her over. He'd seen her at Maria's wedding but she seemed sadder somehow. "You like working here?"

"I like the people." Liz offered while she sipped her water slowly. "It's good to see you."

"I'm not going to give you a speech about taking care of yourself. I'm not going to try to talk you into coming home but your Dad calls. I did."

"Okay." She laughed.

"You feeling okay?"

"Not really." She admitted, sheepishly. "One of the guys at the shop was trying to impress me with his homemaking skills. He… he managed to make me and a couple of those guys sick."

"Aw, a knight in the running, huh."

"I don't know that he's in the running but he's trying." Liz let out a little laugh. "Part of me wants to let him but most of me knows that I don't want him."

"Breaking hearts without even trying, huh." Jim chuckled. "You'll be okay, some day, Liz."

"I know." She paused and moaned. "I'll be back."

Kyle plopped down in her empty seat. "Yeah… Billy's not going to live this one down for a long time."

"Something happen since January? She seemed happier at the wedding."

"She says she's tired a lot." Kyle shrugged. "She's gone to the doctor a few times since then." He shook his head. "Don't tell her folks but she's still getting visions and some of them hit her hard… Like physically. Like a semi."

"Jesus…" Jim sighed heavily. "Is she okay?"

"The doctor can't find anything wrong with her but Liz is getting pretty weak these days and I don't know if it's the visions or if she's just… sick. Liz was concerned enough to go to the doctor. She lucked out with the one she got. She can be trusted. The last big vision was so powerful that her other powers turned on."

"Turned on?"

"She was using parts of her brain that she didn't know were even open. She did some telekinesis and pretty accurately, though she didn't know she was doing it. Not just pyrotechnics either. Moving water glasses and not breaking them. Otherworldly winds. You know. Creepy horror movie stuff."

"It wasn't that bad." Liz told them as she rejoined them, her complexion just a bit more ashen than before. "I should go home. Tell Marty I'll grab the books tomorrow." Then she froze. Kyle jumped up, prepared to aim her to avoid spraying his father with puke or to catch her if she fell over. She did the latter. Kyle caught her and eased her to the floor. No one else in the bar even batted an eye. They'd all seen it too many times already. Everyone just figured she was epileptic. It only lasted a few seconds and she recovered quickly. "I'm okay."

"Did you see something?" Kyle whispered.

"Nothing special. Just a ghost." Liz shrugged. "It can wait a day." She took Jim's arm when he offered it and they both walked her home. Jim helped her off with her shoes and got her a glass of water from her kitchen. He glanced around. "Looks cozy."

"It's perfect." Liz laughed humorlessly. She took the pen and paper when Kyle handed them to her. She jotted down the information. "Could you call them?"

"Yeah." Kyle took her phone from her and noted the missed calls on her screen but didn't say anything about it.

"So, that happens a lot?" Jim asked gently, concern pouring out of his blue eyes.

"This one was easy." Liz let that lifeless laugh float out of her mouth again.

"They get worse?"

"Much worse." She saw the worry on his face. "Sometimes once a week. Sometimes once a month. Sometimes three in a day. It's not a huge deal. I help save lives."

"Yeah. I can see that. What did the doctor say?"

"She wants me in for more tests but there's nothing going on that she can tell. It's not medical or physical. It's supernatural." She gave him the warmest smile she could muster up. "I'll be fine. It's just annoying."

"Maybe you shouldn't be living alone." Jim chided her. "Surely there are some single women who could use a roommate."

"I like my cottage. I'm getting a little set in my ways. Dealing with a stranger and all this stuff, it will be too much. Bobby is usually just over there or if I'm at work, Marty's there and sometimes Kyle."

"Hey Liz, Dean wants to know if there's anything else he should know about the ghost." Kyle called over from where she was using his cell phone.

She schooled her face not to give anything away. "Well, it wasn't wearing a nurses' outfit."

"Okay…" Kyle made a face but relayed the message. He heard a huge intake of breath and then a long release. "Those were her words."

"Alright, then. Is she okay?"

"It was short. 20 seconds, maybe. Not a big deal."

"Good." Dean nodded to himself. "Tell her, I'll take care of it."

"Good luck, man." Kyle hung up the phone. "Hey Dad, I'm gonna run back and let Marty know that Liz won't be working tomorrow either."

"Kyle, no." Liz whined.

"He can do without you for two nights. You need to rest… especially with whatever salmonella Billy passed around in those cookies." He chastised her. He turned to his father. "She always does this. She'll work through the flu."

"I do not." She complained.

"Well, it sounds like something you would do." Jim patted her hand. "Tell you what, I'll come look in on you while Kyle is at work."

"Well, then, when you put it that way." She smiled at him.

Five days later…  
(July 5, 2010)

"Everything's in working order." Dr. Meyer shrugged. "It's not in your head. All the tests are back from the last time. I'm still going to run everything we took from today."

"Because of the stomach virus?"

"You don't have a stomach virus." Dr. Meyer frowned at her patient. She flipped through the paperwork from the lab.

Liz waited for the doctor to continue while she nibbled on a cracker. She hadn't eaten anything decent in days and the Fourth had been torture with all the good smelling food, knowing she couldn't keep any of it down. "I'll just be glad when whatever this is passes."

"You didn't know?"

"Know what?" She shook her head slowly, breaking off a tiny piece of cracker with her teeth.

"Liz… you're the one that told me."

"Told you what?"

"Last week. We were talking and you were looking out the window."

"What?"

"You don't remember your last visit?"

"Yeah. You took forever to come back from the lab."

"Liz… I went to the lab twice while you were here last time. We sat and chatted in between."

Her breathing began to pick up. "You mean I had an episode in here?"

"You told me not to do the test because you already knew."

"Knew what, exactly? What test?"

--

Dean groggily rose from bed when Sam walked in, wide-eyed and damned cheery, with lunch. "How long did I sleep?"

"You were threatening Snuggles every half an hour. I passed out at four and you were still insistent that you could chant the evil little bear off the TV."

"What the fuck did I drink?"

"First came the Irish Car Bombs. I think there were three of them. Somehow you were still standing, then it was the shots of Pucker. You and the blonde did those for nearly an hour. I don't want to know how many. Then came… the pyramid of mixed drinks." Sam thought about it. "A banderas and the bull rider I blame for the late night, two submarinos, a mexicola and a hole in one. So it was about one when I yanked you off the bar but you took a pint of…" He knew the beer. He'd drank it a few times. What the hell was the name of it? "No… it was a Michelada. I'd suggest you puke sooner than later."

"No wonder my mouth tastes like a cat pissed in it." Dean shook his head. That hurt. Fuck, did that hurt. "I didn't take anyone home?"

"Surprisingly enough? No. You kept it in your pants and you ticked off about six girls in your abnormal interest in ordering drinks you've never had before instead of taking down their numbers."

"Pucker…which ones were those?"

"You said they tasted like candy."

"Right…" he grinned, "Jolly ranchers." Then he thought about the thickly sweet taste. "Hold on." He scrambled for the bathroom.

"That's so gross." Sam shook his head and bit into his sandwich.

Dean had to take his mind off puking or he'd never stop. "So, this Snuggles bitch?"

"Yeah… you said he was just possessed and the right incantation could bring him down. You tried it all night."

"What time is it?" He immediately began puking again.

"One."

"We need to be anywhere?"

"Just about to check your voicemail… since you know… you never answer your phone anymore." He put the phone to his ear, pushing buttons as prompted. He heard Dean heave twice more as he listened to all the new voicemails. He was careful to disconnect before the saved messages started playing. No need to sully his mind with that playground. "You up for a poltergeist?"

"Where abouts?" More heaving.

"Lawrence. A leisurely drive? It's not urgent right this second. Missouri is keeping an eye on it… but in light of your condition, speeding might not be good."

"Sounds g-" Dean hit the handle. "This is so nasty."

"You've been hitting the bars pretty hard lately."

"No, I haven't. Last night was the first in a-" So gross. He panted into the bowl for a minute. "Month."

"Seriously? You got a bug then?"

"I don't know. Oh g-"

Two days later…  
(July 7, 2010)

Liz hugged Jim goodbye. Sent messages on to her parents. Watched Betty Lou and Kyle bid farewell to the man who waved as his truck pulled away. She walked slowly back to her cottage. Took a hard look at Valor Springs. Examined its faults and favors. She examined her cottage with its one big room with barely a division for the kitchen. Her tiny bathroom. Her cheery curtains and her homemade doilies. Her too big and empty bed. She had taken an extra day from Marty just to get her head together. She thought maybe he understood. He had liked Jim. They had gotten along. Marty had stared at her like she underestimated herself, that half disappointed fatherly look. Maybe she did. Who knew what the older men had chatted about while she was working and Kyle was running around?

--

Dean tapped the book against his knee for nearly an hour, until Sam threatened to throw it out the window. So he stared at it. He had liked it. Had liked that the girl kept a candle burning in the window for the hero to find his way home by. That she hadn't had a clue how long it would be, or if he'd make it home, and she had done it anyway. He pulled out his cell phone, messing with the settings at first, and then sent a three word message.

_"I miss you."_

Two hours later, he got a reply. _"Yeah, I miss you, too."_

That was all he needed to calm down. Lawrence crept up on him. He didn't realize they were there until Sam pulled them into the Lawrence Roadside Inn. Then he stared at his phone.

"Does it do tricks? Does, like, an army of gremlins come shooting out and do a scaly rendition of Our Town?"

"It'll bean you in the face if you don't go get us a room before that vacancy light shuts off." He watched his brother climb out of the car with his hands up. Okay, so maybe he was a little pissy. Feeling bad about it, he dialed the number from memory. He locked up when he didn't get her voicemail. "Oh… hey."

"Hi."

"You sound about as crappy as I look. You okay?" He frowned at the windshield, keeping an eye on Sam's progress at the front desk.

"Been better."

"I didn't mean what all I said that night. I was worried about Sam… he gives me plenty reason to worry."

"Yeah, I know. I didn't… Dean… can we just put that behind us? It's really good to hear your voice."

"You got Stan to phone in your last vision. I had… I… I figured you'd talk to me if you had another one." He averted his eyes to the side view mirror but quickly shifted again to stare out at the parking lot.

"I didn't think you wanted to talk to me… and when you asked about the vision instead…"

"That's just me in work mode. You've never seen that before. I get pretty… focused."

"I guess not. I catch you when you're not hunting. I guess when you take off for a hunt, I just understand. I never really thought about you being so focused on a hunt… or you know… you needing to be so focused."

"I hope you don't have to see me that way. Sam says that I get like my Dad when I'm on a hunt. Maybe I do. He hunted for a long time that way."

"Yeah. It's really good to talk to you again, Dean." She hesitated.

"Sammy's coming. I'll check in after the hunt." He breathed. "Liz…"

"I…"

"It's a no-brainer, just like the last one."

"Okay."

"Were you going to say something?"

"No. It can wait."

She hung up without a goodbye. Dean let Sam drive them around to the back of the building to their room. He felt better than he had in weeks… but he still looked like shit. "I call first shower."

"Damn it." Sam muttered.

* * *

TBC 


	46. Chapter 45

Part 45 – Three days later…  
(July 11, 2010)

"It's a little more complicated than we thought." Dean admitted. "You haven't gotten anything?"

"No." Liz shook her head into the phone. "Not even a blur."

"Damn. I know I said… It's the hunt. I promise."

"I know. You want to talk about it?"

"It was just supposed to be a poltergeist but this psychic went in and there are like nine of them and some of them are just ghosts. It's one thing to desecrate one or two graves on a hunt but trying to do five is just not possible. And then there are the four fucking poltergeists who keep throwing shit at people. When we showed up, they must have known what we were going to do because they stepped up and threw a two-year-old tantrum."

"Sounds crazy."

"No. Crazy is the poltergeist who wanted to pin me to the floor and fuck me. Four of them pulling me in different directions is just…"

There was no way to stop the startled laugh and then the giggle when his words processed fully. "Seriously? You're attracting poltergeists now?"

"Very funny."

"Did you get her number? Is she going to call you?"

"It's not funny." Dean bit out.

"Yes, it is." Sam smiled from the other bed where he was nursing a bump on his head. "None of the poltergeists jumped my bones."

"Shut up." Dean muttered then got up to exit the room. "So, we're trying to make our move tonight. We called in a favor. Couple of hunters to help dig the graves. We'll do the poltergeist crap tomorrow in the morning."

"It sounds dangerous, Dean."

"You doing okay?"

"I'm fine. I'm nice and safe in my little cottage." Liz moved to the window to stare out at the rusting pile of Impala parts in the yard.

"I don't know when I'm heading back through." Dean cleared his throat and let the heat of the night drench him. "I uh… I've been avoiding going through but if it's okay with you… I could… drag the Impala back into Bobby's for a tune up or something."

"You're making up excuses?"

"Maybe."

"Are you assuming to just jump into bed when you get here?"

"Aw, come on. I know that I was a jerk but… it doesn't have to be like that. I just want to…" He cursed under his breath. "You're gonna make me do it, aren't you. You're evil. Way eviler than any poltergeist. This is my first time doing this. Okay? I want that taken into consideration." He took a deep breath and couldn't find the charm to save his life. "I miss you. I'm glad we're talking again. If all I get is a sandwich and a beer and some laughs… that's all I get. I'd still show up."

Liz shut her eyes. She knew, felt it in her bones, that he was being honest. "Dean… I have something to tell you."

"Oh god… did you hook up with Billy? He looks like the kind of guy to have diseases."

"Okay, shut up. Never mind."

"I'm sorry. Come on. Tell me."

"No more jokes. I'm serious."

"Okay. Hit me." Dean stared off into the night and listened to her shaky breaths. The longer it took for her to speak, the more worried he got.

"I've been going to see Dr. Meyer."

"Yeah, Stan told me."

"Well, he doesn't know this. I had a vision while I was at her office a while back. I didn't remember. When I found out, I had some more tests done."

His heart fell to his stomach. "But you're okay, right? It's just more weird visions. No big deal. Right?"

"There's nothing wrong with me, actually. Aside from some nausea, I'm perfectly healthy."

"So, what's making you so serious?"

"It's the reason for the nausea, Dean."

"The reason for the…"

"We haven't been careful in our… interludes. I haven't been and I know you haven't been… I guess I have to just…" Liz took a deep breath and braced herself. "I'm pregnant, Dean."

Those three words took a few moments to sink in. His brain had become instantly fogged over. "How… um… when…"

"I'm pretty sure it was sometime in that week I kept you in bed." When he didn't say anything, she swallowed down a lump. "I haven't done much since I found out. I'm still kind of adjusting to the news. Apparently, I told Dr. Meyer that it was going to be a boy. I'm… I'm keeping the baby, Dean."

"No. Yeah. Of course." Dean blurted out. "A boy?" The floor fell out of his world but as soon as he registered the meaning of her words, it started falling back into place. "I'm gonna have a son?"

"If you don't…" She swallowed down a huge lump.

"No, I mean, yeah. Aw, shit." He took the first breath in a couple of minutes. "I'm messing this up. I'm sorry."

"No, I know it's a big deal but…"

"I just… I never thought about it. I mean, I joke about it but… a son?" He let out a nervous laugh as his mind fully wrapped around the words. "I'm gonna be a dad."

"So, are you okay with this?"

"Yeah, yeah. When is? I mean, what's the… I obviously don't know what needs to be done or what I have to know. Help me out here, Liz." He felt his face was smiling but his mind was still a mess. "I just…"

"I'm due in January. It's a boy. That's all we do know."

"We also know he's going to be a handsome devil."

Liz laughed genuinely. There he was. The stammering idiot was replaced with the Dean Winchester that she had come to know and tolerate. "Of course, I'm just hoping he inherits my ego."

"No. He's a Winchester. He'll be just like his old man."

"So… we're okay?"

"After this job, I'm coming."

"Yeah. We'll talk then."

"Don't talk to Sammy, I want to tell him." Dean froze up a bit. "Liz, I… we'll talk when I get there."

"Yeah."

"Winchester! We got some digging to do!" A hunter called across the lot.

--

Liz hung up the phone. She didn't know how it was going to work. He seemed to have taken it well. She still wasn't sure how she felt but she knew it would work out. It had to.

The next day…  
(July 12, 2010)

Dean hummed all the way into Missouri's waiting room. She was with a client so he had to wait and wait and wait. He couldn't sit because he was still covered in dirt. He was just supposed to be in and out then meet Sam on the way out of town. Finally, they emerged and Dean could follow Missouri into the kitchen where she was still gathering supplies for him. She pressed her lips together to hide a smile as she watched him. "Congratulations, Dean."

"For what?" He shook his head at her, a smile creeping out because he couldn't contain it.

"You're so happy, you're humming and grinning like a maniac. Even if I wasn't psychic, I would at least know something. It's either a girl or good news but for you… I know it's both. You got the girl and she gave you the good news."

Dean could only grin wider. "It's gonna be a boy."

"Another Winchester man on the way. I heard you singing our song. You better teach it to him." She laughed to herself as she finished bundling up his supplies.

"Our song?" He frowned at her.

"You and me… Well, you were young. You didn't remember me when you and your brother first came to see me. I don't see you remembering since then. Hurry on out. You and Sam have things to do. Give my love to your brother." She pushed him towards the door with the parcel in his hands. "And Dean, you'd better bring that boy by after he's born."

Dean left with his supplies. It wasn't until after they had sent four nasty poltergeists to hell that it had sunk in. The song he swore his mother had taught him… Missouri had sung to him in that time before the Winchesters had left Lawrence for good.

Sam watched his brother mutter to himself for twenty minutes before he spoke. "So, what happened? Did the job not go to your expectations?"

"It's not about that." Dean bit out. "It's nothing." He cursed under his breath for a few long moments. "You can't tell Missouri anything. She knows everything before you say and do it."

"So she knows… what?"

"About Liz." Dean admitted.

"What happened to Liz?" Sam sat up straight in his seat.

Dean cursed to himself again. He had wanted to tell his brother first. He didn't want it to be part of a hateful rant but what could he do now? "This is the first time I'm saying it out loud, Sammy. I swear to you that I wanted to tell you first. Missouri just… took the words from me."

"Okay. What happened to Liz?"

"Well, strictly speaking… I happened to Liz."

"Meaning what exactly?"

"Liz is pregnant, Sammy." Dean looked to his brother for the reaction. Sam just blinked at his brother. "It's my kid… A boy." He offered his brother a smile. "You're gonna have a nephew in… five or six months, I forget."

"Whoa. Whoa. Whoa." Sam let out a surprised laugh and turned to face his brother as fully as possible. "That's what all the secrecy has been about? You and Liz hooked up?"

"Have been…" Dean admitted. "Hooking up… you know… for a while, now."

"Well?"

"Well what? That's it. That's the news."

"Are you gonna…"

"I don't know. I want that. I think she wants that but… I don't think it's safe."

"Well, that's bull shit." Sam shook his head. "Do you love her?"

"I don't know, Sammy. I'm not good at all the touchy-feely crap. I know… that it's not passing anytime soon."

"More bull shit." Sam could not believe his big brother. "This is Lillian we're talking about. Not one of your one-night stands."

"I know!" Dean barked out. "I haven't had a long term anything with anyone ever. This is the first one and… it's been months since we were there and she's… she's pregnant with my son, Sammy. My son." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He had been happy when Liz had first told him but it was becoming a bad idea the longer it was in his head with all the thoughts about options for life with a child. "I don't know what I'm going to do but I can try to keep them safe. I can try to be there for him like Dad was for us."

--

Liz made small talk for a while but she knew she was just delaying the inevitable. Once she told her mother, the hard part was over. Then she could call everyone else on her list and most of them wouldn't exactly be happy but her mother would be the one to judge everyone else by. "There's actually a reason, I called, Mom."

"Is something wrong?"

"No… no. Not really. It's just… Well, I'll just say it… I'm pregnant."

"Honey?" Nancy sank down into a chair. "Pregnant? I didn't know that you were seeing anyone."

"I'm not… not really. Not dating, per se but… there's someone that I've been exclusive with. He's… well, he was… ecstatic when I told him. That has to be good, right?"

"Do you love this man?"

"I could, I think… I just… I hesitate to use that word."

"Is he going to marry you?""I don't know. We didn't discuss it. When I see him, I'm sure we'll talk."

"When you see him? Is he a trucker, Liz?"

"No. He's not a trucker. You've met him actually."

"Sam Winchester?" Nancy breathed a sigh of relief. She'd met Sam. He was a nice young man.

"No… Not Sam Winchester. It's Dean Winchester, actually."

Nancy shut her eyes. She had taken to the man well enough but anyone could see that Dean Winchester was just not the type of man to settle down. She bit back every chiding thought and focused on her daughter. "I'll… break the news to your father. If you need anything, call me. I might not be the expert at casual or long distance relationships but I did have a baby once."

Liz wondered for a moment what it cost her mother not to berate her for getting pregnant outside a committed relationship but wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Yeah, I know. I'll keep you updated."

* * *

TBC 


	47. Chapter 46

Part 46 – the next day  
(July 13, 2010)

Dean kept his eyes on the road. He and Sam were having the longest chick-flick moment of all time and they weren't really fighting it. Sam laughed suddenly. "Do you remember that time I decided to try some of Dad's orange juice?"

He couldn't have stopped the laugh if he tried. Sam had been four or five and he'd been almost ten. "God, I've never seen you puke that much. Oh crap. I thought it was hilarious but Dad… not so much."

"He yelled at me so hard, I thought I was going to crap my pants."

"Yeah, good times." Dean laughed, remembering how hard he'd been trying not to laugh. Of course then their father had spent the rest of the day making sure that Sam was okay and trying to figure out how to prevent it from happening again. "The only thing funnier was the Nair incident. I thought Dad was going to tan my hide."

"I never realized how much I missed having him yell at me for the stupid stuff."

"I miss his laugh the most."

"That gravely, raspy cough?" Sam shook his head at his brother. "It was creepy."

"No… his laugh before Mom died." Dean grinned at memories so old they were vague blurs of impressions. "Dad could laugh and shake you to your bones." He caught his brother's eye. "If he was holding you, which he used to do a lot."

"He laughed after she died." Sam protested. "He laughed at me all the time when I messed up maneuvers. At you, when you were drinking underage and he had to punish you."

"But it wasn't the same, Sammy." Dean shook his head. "Being a dad gave him that laugh. I'm sorry you can't remember it… being a widower… took his laugh away. He laughed with the hunters and with Bobby and Marty but it wasn't the same. Part of him died when Mom died."

"Yeah, I guess I figured but… I never had anything to compare with."

"I'm not gonna lie… I'm scared out of my mind, Sammy."

"I believe you."

"Yeah…" Dean eyed his brother. "Cause you let me get away with calling you Sammy for the last hour."

Sam had to laugh. He'd let it slide because he'd gotten his brother to open up for once. "I'm a man now… Sammy just doesn't fit."

"I'm your big brother. You'll always be Sammy to me… cause I still see the chubby 12 year old when I look at you."

"Shut up, jerk."

"Bitch.

--

Kyle shook his head at his friend. "Wait… I thought you were mourning double time or something and now you're telling me that you're knocked up and that it's not some kind of immaculate conception."

"Umm… not mourning. Am pregnant." She figured if she limited eye contact that it would be easier to say but it wasn't.

"So… who's the guy?"

"Well…"

"Just some guy at the bar?"

"Well, no. Actually, he's a friend and it's been going on a while but I… wasn't, you know, ready for a relationship…" That was a load of crap, even to her own ears.

He scoffed at her and tossed his coffee cup at the nearest trash can. "Liz? Who is it?"

"Dean… Winchester."

"What?" He blinked rapidly at her. As if that would change the sounds her words had made in his ears. "I had you on a pedestal and you just dived right off. Dean Winchester? I thought you were smarter than to fall for his lines."

"Well, he didn't give me lines."

"Well, is there some semblance of affection?"

"Sure…"

"Liz, come on… That guy is a dog." Kyle cursed under his breath. He had several ways to torture the guy without touching him. If he pelted the guy with pebbles without touching them… eventually the guy would start bleeding and there'd be no way to tie it back to him.

"No, he isn't… anymore. He's been going through a really rough… decade or three."

"Seriously, though."

"Well, whatever your opinion of Dean… I can't uncrack the egg now."

Later that night…

Dean swallowed down the lump in his throat. He watched her move, tired and glowing. He took a deep breath, walked inside and took a seat at the bar. He felt her hand on his shoulder when she walked passed but she didn't stop. Just a light squeeze more than a slight brushing in passing. She was working. She wouldn't stop for him… just like it was already pretty clear that he wouldn't stop hunting for her. How in the hell were they going to bring a child into the world?

When she took her break, she took it next to him. They didn't say a word for a long time. Liz could feel the heat of his body radiating closer to her. Even after strangely timed kisses and spur of the moment encounters, they had never been so awkward. Through all of it, never been completely comfortable either.

Liz watched him regard her with an odd expression on his face. A sort of grin but mostly just a look of intensity that started to bug the crap out of her. "What are you staring at?"

"I just never considered it… and I considered a lot of things about you from the day we met in this bar." He didn't reach for her or even scoot closer. "Mother of my child was just not something I considered."

"I think consideration is out of our hands now."

"Just wondered what's next. Do we make some sort of agreement? Is there a shotgun to my back that I'm not aware of yet?"

"Is this your way of being chivalrous? Because it sucks a little." After getting grief all day, she was so not in the mood for his sense of humor.

"I don't know." He scoffed and sat back a little.

"Nice to hear you admit it for once."

"I can be humble. Seriously, this has never happened before… it's never been more than a half-thought in my mind."

"Right." She screwed up her mouth to hide a smile. Awkward didn't really cover the way she felt. "I didn't mean for this to happen. I just…"

"You don't do things like what we've been doing."

"Right."

"I've never gotten that phone call before. I don't know how to do this."

"Yeah, well, me either."

--

Sam watched his brother and Liz talk. He was still a little bewildered by the whole thing. When Liz finally made her way over, he gave her a hug. "Welcome to the family."

"I don't know about that…" She lowered her eyes. Her upbringing said the next step was a ring but… given the circumstances, she didn't know if that was a good idea.

"You're carrying the future of the Winchester line. You're family." Sam gave her a squeeze. "You can't escape us now."

"I seem to collect relatives."

"Well, whatever happens now… I'll always be there for you."

"Thanks, Sam."

Early the next morning…  
(July 14, 2010)

Dean woke where he had fallen asleep, fully clothed, on the chair next to the window in Liz's cottage. He worked the kink out of his neck as he sat up. His back complained but he ignored it. Liz was lying across the bed, her arms tucked beneath her. They had talked some but the silences had been huge and telling. They had no clue what they were getting themselves into.

"Liz?" He whispered, her head moved a little. After a moment, she picked up her head. "You work today?"

"Hm-hm." She shook her head. Dean moved her over and then covered her up with the blankets before taking the other half of the bed. "Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you staying?"

"For a few days or until we get another hunt."

"Ok." She snuggled into her pillow. When he started to shift off the bed, she stopped him. "No, just… I need a couple more hours but… stay here."

"Yeah, okay." He settled his weight on the bed once more. There was no way he was getting back to sleep any time soon. Glancing around, he wished, not for the first time, Liz had a TV. Then his eyes landed on the book on the bedside table. It stared back. He wasn't going to pick it up. That's just what it wanted.

--

Liz woke up to feel a hand on her belly. Blinking away sleep, she could make out Dean's face turning from a book in his hand to his hand splayed on her stomach. When he saw that she was awake, he quickly yanked his hand back and shut the book. "Dean… what were you doing?"

"Nothing." He shook his head, his far hand sliding the book off his lap and under the blanket. Reaching across him, she yanked the book out. The cover was easily recognizable which was why she'd bought it on whim the last time she'd been to Baxter. What to Expect When You're Expecting. "Just some light reading."

"Uh-huh." Liz tugged the book out and sat up. "What'd you learn?"

He picked up her hand and held up her little finger. "He's not even this big yet."

"Good job, Winchester." She just stared at him for a minute as she woke up fully. "So you've been reading."

"Maybe a little." He bit out tersely, his face coloring. "I got bored and you said not to leave."

Liz stared at her little finger. It was maybe an inch and a half in length. "So our son is this big, huh."

"Our son." Dean winced. "It sounds weird, right?" He looked to her for confirmation. He held the book when she replaced it in his hands. "I just keep thinking that the last time we were together would have been okay, except that I fucked it up."

"Dean…" Liz slid a hand up his arm. "We had a fight but it was just a fight." She rolled onto her side to look at him. "I spent years wanting an accident so I could have a baby and I never got one… until now. I can't take this for granted. There's no way I'd raise him without including you… unless you didn't want to be involved."

"It's just weird. I know all about the anatomy of a demon-ectomy but I don't know anything about babies or what it means to be responsible for it."

"Sure you do. Both of you have said it. You practically raised Sam. If anything, you're the expert between the two of us." She winced as she adjusted for comfort. "I would probably have known about it sooner if we hadn't been fighting. I have been changing in subtle ways."

"Oh yeah?"

"You do know that you broke some trust with that little stunt you pulled on me. I won't be so easily coerced into bed…" She trailed off at the smirk on his face. "Into sex, then." She shook her head at him as she adjusted her position yet again.

His face slid into a pensive mask before he scooted down to be eye level with her. "Why choose to keep him? You could have… and never told me… found some better guy to play at father… I would have never known."

"You are not as bad a person as you think you are. Honestly, I don't know why but… I had a vision of him… enough to tell Dr. Meyer that it would be a boy. I don't know what I would have done had I not known that. Do you know how long it takes to determine the sex of a baby?"

"Into the… second thing-a-ma-jig?" Dean frowned at the book between them.

"Right. I'd already be showing, have already felt him move, known he had a heartbeat." Without even thinking about it, she scooted closer to lay her head on his shoulder. When his arms wrapped around her frame, she sighed. "What were you doing when I woke up?"

"Oh… um… I…" Dean stammered himself into a chuckle. He was being stupid was what he was doing. "It said that your body would be preparing and that the abdomen wall would be firmer and I was checking it out."

"Yeah… he's gonna start really growing soon. I don't know how I made it this long without knowing except that I was puking anyway because Billy can't cook. Camouflaged my symptoms… that and I was trying not to think about you." His arms stiffened around her. "I just… I've been hurt too many times, Dean. I let you walk out on me because I was tired of being hurt that way and I figured if I just let you… that it wouldn't hurt so much."

"Did it work?"

"No."

His arms relaxed a bit and he really let himself relax into the bed. "Is it too early to think of names?"

Liz picked up her head to look at him. Really look at him. She shook her head. "Why bother discussing it? I already know what name you'll choose."

"Cause you're all psychic and stuff?"

"No, cause you love your dad that much."

He averted his eyes and took a breath. "I just keep thinking that I want him to know."

"I understand. After I told you, the first person I talked to was my mom."

"Oh God…" Dean groaned. "She's going to hunt me down with a shotgun, isn't she?"

"She's thinking about it. I don't know how my dad has taken the news though."

"I know he's got a rifle."

"Marty knows."

"Fuck me." Dean cursed loudly but didn't make a move to get off the bed to save his hide. "Bobby knows, too. Those two can't keep a secret to save their lives." They lay silent for a long time. "There's gonna be this person that is half me… I hope it's the good half." She laughed at him but didn't say anything. "I told you that you weren't just a girl in port, right?"

"Yes, you did."

"I really mean that."

"Okay."

"I want to be here the whole time…"

"But there are evil things that need killing."

"Yeah."

"So…"

"What happens next? I mean, do we keep doing what we've been doing?"

"There's no reason to stop but… you leave me for long periods of time." She rubbed his side and scooted closer.

"Maybe I don't stay gone so long… in case you need me." When she watched his face, the laughter and lust had crept back in. "You know… for anything."

Later that day…

Bobby handed Dean a wrench and crossed his arms. "You gonna do right by that girl, Dean?"

Dean let out a long breath as he tightened a nut. That's what everyone wanted to know. "It's up to her."

"Bullshit it is." He lowered his voice. "You got her in trouble, you fix it."

"It's really up to her. She's not ready to get married."

"Too bad. She's pregnant." Bobby smacked him upside the head. "Man up."

"And if she doesn't want me?" Dean rose to face Bobby.

"Too bad."

"Bobby, in 1950, the guy saved the pregnant girl by marriage. It's 2010 and Liz might be safer if she wasn't married to me in particular." Dean stopped the older man from comment with a wave of the wrench. "You've got minors like grave desecration on your record. I'm a wanted felon and alleged murderer. The name Winchester is just going to send up an alarm. I'm wanted in more than one state for more than one charge, hard enough to lock me up for a good long while… I can't do her any good by marrying her… especially if she doesn't even love me."

Something flickered across the younger man's face and that little something was the only thing that held Bobby's tongue. "I'm not raising no babies, you better make sure she's taken care of."

Dean snorted and shook his head. "Right."

--

"He's going to marry you, right?" Marty wiped his hands on a towel and stared at his favorite waitress. "Right?"

"We haven't discussed it." Liz evaded the question, while she dropped a tub of dishes next to the sink.

"Why the hell not?"

"Marty, it's not that simple."

"It should be."

"If life was simple, I'd never have met you or married my husband… if life were simple, I'd be back home married to Stan with a bunch of kids by now." She let her voice rise. "It's not simple because I ran away from home at 18, I got married right after graduation, I've been shot at, chased by multiple officers of many branches of the law… I was widowed at 25. My life is not simple on the most basic levels, Marty." She stared him down. "I'm 27 years old and I'm a waitress in the middle of nowhere, having a baby with a demon hunter and I don't even know how I feel about him. Okay. It's not simple. I can't give anyone an answer about it, today."

"Okay." Marty nodded, a little scared.

"I'm taking a break."

"Okay."

Liz stormed her way out of the bar, ignoring requests for refills or for orders. All she wanted to do was crawl under her covers and block out the world for half an hour to regain her balance. She was muttering to herself as she rounded Bobby's house to get to her cottage. She ran smack into Dean, who looked about as pissed as she did. "In the cottage, now."

"Is that an order?" Dean raised an eyebrow at her.

"Yes, it is." Flushed from anger and the need for release, Liz led the way. The door was hardly closed before the clothes were coming off.

--

Sam looked up when the door opened and made a face. He knew they were involved, they had said it, but to see evidence in the form of touching was creepy. It was downright disturbing to see the kiss at the end of the bar. "Hey, you two, get a room. That's how you got in trouble in the first place."

"He's just mad cause you fell for the hot brother." Dean muttered, barely pulling his lips away to get the words out.

"Fell for or was ensnared by?" Liz made an actual effort to free some space between them. It was heady, the feeling of not hiding. Of expectation, of knowing something more was to come even though she didn't know what it was. "I have to get back to work."

"I'm working on the car." Dean cleared his throat, straightened his shirt and ducked out the door.

Sam let out a bark of laughter. "Okay."

--

Dinner found them sitting at a table, eating in comfortable silence… almost. Sam stared between them all during dinner. It didn't look as cozy as what he'd witnessed earlier. There was nothing cutesy that he could tease his brother for later. And then he thought of something. "Hold on… you say that you've been hooking up for a while… how long are you talking? Since April?"

"Not really." Dean cleared his throat and sat up.

"Since um…" Liz looked to Dean, who wasn't meeting anyone's eyes. "Thanksgiving, actually."

"Oh… um…" Sam averted his eyes and his eyebrows shot up.

Liz shut her eyes and then set her jaw. "Dean… did I not ask you what you were telling your brother?"

"Maybe…" Dean knew he was so in for it because apparently Sam had never heard of a poker face.

She smacked him upside the head and then got up from the table to take a walk. Dean rubbed the back of his skull and then kicked his brother. Sam yelped, then bent to rub his shin. "Dude… you were talking about her all this time?"

"I embellished a little."

"Oh yeah. A little? Those are images I don't need in my head." He sat back and sipped his beer. "I have enough of your sex life permanently burned in my head… I don't need this too."

"Oh please. What a baby."

"I'm serious, Dean. I know the first girl you got to second base with was Sharon Douglas."

"No, no. The first pair of boobs I saw were not on Sharon Douglas, nor were they the first ones I ever touched. We were hunting down that werewolf when we were kids. I was like… 12 or something. I missed the shot cause the chick's shirt was shredded so badly it was a vest." Dean shook his head. "You didn't see it?"

"No, I was busy watching Dad shoot the werewolf." Sam frowned at his brother but having been 7 at the time, boobs hadn't really caught his attention as much as a roaring, drooling werewolf.

"Jess's the first you saw?"

"No… Funny guy. I met Jess when I was 19. The first I saw were on Sharon Douglas when I was 12."

"What?" Dean sat up.

"Yeah, I came out for a drink of water and there they were but I don't think she noticed."

"Dude, seriously?" He frowned at the thought of all the things he'd done with Sharon that his 12 year old brother shouldn't have seen.

"Apparently you didn't either. That's also how I saw Joanna Ramos's and Missy Highwater's."

"I knew it. You were a perve, just like me."

"But I don't give you details on the girl I'm currently screwing."

"I said one or two things."

"Yeah… and now… you've shared the intimate details with your brother about your sex life with the future mother of your child. Think about that."

* * *

TBC 


	48. Chapter 47

Part 47 – The next day…  
(July 15, 2010)

Dean had to force himself awake to answer the door. He hadn't slept that hard in a long while. Yanking on a shirt, he opened the door a crack. "Sammy?"

"Hey… um…" Sam winced as he realized that Liz must still be asleep. "I picked up a pattern in Florida. I just… wanted to let you know I was going to check it out."

"What?" Dean stepped outside, frowning at his brother.

"It's just a Vampire nest. No big deal." Sam shrugged, his bag already packed to go.

"Let me get my stuff together."

"Dean… I'm going alone."

"No." Dean shook his head and turned to go inside to retrieve his clothes and his bag.

"Dean." Sam hissed but stayed in the doorway. "You can't be running all over right now."

"You can't go out there alone." Dean gestured to the world outside. "New York was a trap and a clever one, if we hadn't had a heads up… we'd both be dead."

"You're just going to leave her?"

"We're coming back." Dean bit out as he jammed his clothes into his bag. "Wait for me in the car."

Sam shut the door a little too hard. Dean stilled his movements. He looked over at Liz, who was lying still but with her eyes open. "Be careful."

"We're coming back. He's determined to go. I need to be there."

"Yeah, I know." She nodded.

Two days later…  
(July 17, 2010)

Liz listened to the voice on the other end with relief. "So it's really no big deal?"

"Right." Sam reassured her. "He's got a concussion but he's got a hard head." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Listen, Liz… there's another reason I had wanted to come out and do this on my own. I was going to make a stop on my way back. Having Dean with me… it changes my plans. Could you do something for me?"

"Sam?"

A week later…  
(July 24, 2010)

Liz held her barely flat stomach. She placed flowers on the marker. She frowned at the dates. Mary Winchester had been only 29 years old when she had died. She placed another set on the freshly installed marker next to that one. John Winchester had died 23 years and 4 days after his wife.

"Mr., Mrs. Winchester. I'm Liz Evans. I'm a friend of your sons. Mr. Winchester, we actually met once… though not formally. I know it's a little insane, since neither of you are really in there but I wanted to share the news with someone who would be glad to hear it. Dean and I are going to have a baby. I have it on pretty good authority that it's going to be a boy. Dean's very happy."

"Giddy is more like it." An almost childlike voice spoke from behind Liz. "Pardon me, sweetie. I didn't mean to interrupt but this is a small town and when I heard someone had bought John a stone, I had to see who it was."

"Did you know the Winchesters?" Liz asked, carefully.

"I still do. I don't suppose either of them mentioned Missouri."

"What happened in Missouri?"

"No, that's my name. Missouri Mosley."

"Liz Evans."

"Oh… I thought it might be you. You turned my Dean on his ear. He needed it. When I found out he put a bun in someone's oven, I never dreamed you'd be so sweet. Dean's a bit of a tart." She tilted her head at the bewildered girl. "But you like some spice in your life."

"You're the psychic." Liz blurted out. "I'm sorry. Sam never mentioned you by name but he did talk about you… You're the one that helped them in their old house."

"You really aren't like me. Your… gift is more like Sam's."

"My visions are a bit more varied than his are." Liz shrugged. "I touch someone or something and I get a sense for it. If I try hard enough… I can… force it but it tires me out."

"How?"

Liz shook Missouri's hand and took a step back. "You loved John Winchester. Grew to love him over the years. He never loved you the way you loved him." She shut her eyes against the sudden headache. "But he loved you enough to hide your connection to him. So the demon wouldn't come after you." She pitched forward and caught herself on a headstone. "You two were good friends. You're the only friend of his that never ran him off or threatened him bodily harm… or meant it when you did."

Missouri rushed to catch the girl and set her back on her feet. "Honey, your gift is not natural, is it?"

"Isn't that why they call it supernatural?"

"Come on. John and Mary will be there later. You need to rest some."

--

Dean checked his phone again and ran a hand over his face as he traced the path on his map. "They wouldn't risk doubling back to a place where they'd been run off, right?"

"Not if they're smart." Sam shook his head at the map. He had the feeling they'd chase the vampires in circles if they didn't find out where the main nest was.

"Then they only have one choice; to head down the peninsula." He glanced at his phone again. Sam scoffed at him and shook his head, pushing off the car. "What?"

His brother was truly clueless. Sam turned to his brother. "You check that phone again and I'll ram it down your throat."

"What?" Dean blinked at his brother.

"Did Cassie mess you up so badly that you can't admit you have feelings for Liz?"

"Who the hell said anything about Cassie?"

"You're avoiding the subject."

"I like her." Dean admitted. "I sleep with her… repeatedly, you know. It's not so bad. I don't know what it is."

"Figure it out, cause come the New Year… you're going to be tied to her forever."

--

Liz came to with a start. The air smelled good and the bed was soft. "I hear you scaring yourself in there. Come on out and have something to eat. The bathroom is on your left if you want to wash up before dinner."

Missouri, Liz recalled. Dragging herself up, she followed the directions to the bathroom to wash off her smeared make-up. Then she followed her nose to the kitchen table. "That smells good."

"I would hope so. Looking at you, you would never know you were carrying any bun in there."

"Evening sickness…" Liz explained, as she sat down. "The doctor says my weight is fine."

"You are adorable, honey. Not Dean's usual type and I'm glad of it." Missouri set two plates on the table. "Do you have a place to stay for the night?"

"I hadn't gotten that far, actually." She admitted.

"It was really sweet of you to get John a headstone."

"I didn't… Sam did but he didn't want Dean to know yet. He's…"

"Not been dealing very well, I know."

"Sam says he's refused to even see his mother's grave." Liz told her as she contemplated taking a bite just to enjoy the flavor. "Dean… is doing better but it's hard to tell."

"Honey, he's always been that way. Ever since he was a goofy little, freckle-faced five-year-old. He plays but he's got a lot going on behind that smile."

"Yeah." Liz nodded to herself and chanced a bite to hide her smile.

"Yeah, I guess you would know that." Missouri gave her a sly smile. "If someone had told me that he'd grow out of that goofy phase, I might have insisted John stay longer to instill some respect in that boy."

Liz looked up at her host. "John did fine. The boys are… chivalrous when it counts. Sam insisted he'd take care of me if Dean… shirks his responsibilities… but…"

"Dean won't do that." Missouri tried to hide her enormous smile. "He was giddy when I saw him, broadcasting without saying a word." The smile only lasted a short while before it was a laugh. "How many people are holding a shotgun to his back?"

"Only everyone." Liz laughed finally. "Oh my God. My boss, my friends, their bosses… my parents if they could get here quick enough."

"Do you see them often?" Missouri's face set in a frown as she read all the vulnerability. "Not since high school, huh. You love them but you can't go back there."

"My friends and I fell apart when my husband died. We split up. We had to, to cope. They needed their families and I needed to stay away." Liz smiled with a harsh laugh. "I had actually wanted my visions gone for awhile… and they were but when I started getting them again, I was relieved."

"You thought you could give back a gift?"

"No… you were right… I wasn't born this way. I became this way and when Max died, I thought the parts he'd given me would die too. They're still there but now they come with headaches and fireworks." She stared down into her plate. "But it's comforting that I still have them."

"I won't pretend to know about you and your husband but I know what Dean thought he knew… what Sam knows. His existence crossed borders on this earth." Missouri reached for Liz's hand; Liz didn't hesitate to hand it over. "I don't know the details but I think you can figure them out. Whatever your husband was… he was part human and that left him open to human influences in the supernatural world. He tapped into it more than once. He passed some of that onto you. Don't fight it. That's what causes the headaches, the seizures. Part of you is fighting the evolution of your gift." She took a moment before retracting her hand. "I knew you were powerful but I didn't know that you were still growing. You made some excellent contacts in the hunting world. No one knows about you. Keep it that way. Marty and Bobby are sweet men. They will protect you with their lives. Bobby especially. He lost that dog of his and he ain't been the same since."

"What happened to Rumsfeld? He never said." Liz frowned suddenly. Clear as she could remember, the dog had just not been there one day.

"Demon killed that sweet dog." Missouri shook her head. "I've never met the men but I've spoken to Marty once. I knew them through John."

"Sweet dog?" Liz laughed. "You've never met Rumsfeld, have you? I did… Once. That was enough but Bobby loved that dog. He scared the crap out of me, though."

"Dean loved that dog."

"Dean would." Liz bit her lip. "He also sleeps with a machete under his pillow."

"Your… fondness for Dean carries you through a lot of days."

"Especially lately. I don't know what I expected when I told him but he surprised me in a good way. I can't say I know what we're doing exactly but… he's trying… hard, to keep it together, just like me."

"I will tell you something about Dean. He doesn't try. He does. If it doesn't work… you'll only know because you're psychic or because he tells you."

--

Dean shook as he lowered his machete. Warm blood spattered everywhere. He spit before he dared take a breath. "Sammy?"

"I'm good." Came the weak reply from across the room.

"We torch it… then we shower, then we split. In that order. Don't swallow any of that shit. Spit until you can't taste but don't swallow. We'll drink holy water when we get back to the car." Dean got moving and didn't stop until he was drenched and relatively clean. Then he tossed a match into the house that Sam had just soaked with gasoline. It went up and he climbed into the Impala to wait for Sam. He checked his phone and cursed. He didn't care if Sam heard him make the call. "Liz… I know we're taking longer than I said we would but the job is done. I'm heading back."

"Pussy." Sam muttered with a smile as he dropped his saturated body into the passenger seat. "You finally called her?"

"I'm surprised she hasn't been up my ass about not calling…" Then Dean flicked through his call log and turned to his brother. "Stupid. What'd you do that for?"

"Cause I knew you weren't going to call her until it was done. She shouldn't be worried you're dead if you're not." Sam yanked a book out of his bag and thumped his brother on the head with it. "Do your research. Stress on a mother is stress on a baby inside the mother."

"I already read this book." Dean tossed it back hard enough to make Sam wince. He started the engine and turned the car onto the road they had come up. They had to hit the freeway before someone saw the smoke and called in the fire brigade.

"You already read this book." Sam held it up. "When?"

"Dunno. Last week?" Dean shrugged, shivering a little. "Little Johnny is this big." He held up his little finger. "He's fully formed."

"Little Johnny?" Sam barked out a laugh but quickly sobered. "Yeah… little Johnny. You clear that by his mother?"

"She's the one who told me what I would name him." Dean shrugged. "It's like… I'm happy but I'm terrified. Like when you went away, I was pissed and sad but I was proud, too. You know?"

"Look. I've been ragging and I shouldn't. I don't know what I would do if a girl I was seeing just… sprung something like this when there's not a commitment beforehand." Sam empathized now that he had some distance from it. "It's complicated but it's not bad."

"Right. It's workable right? I mean… I can still do what I do and the kid will have a half-way normal existence. I won't be dragging him along to hunt shit down. He'll hear about it, learn about it, but he can… live the way you wanted."

"But being an absent father?"

"Well… I can't just stop hunting. I'll get lazy and complacent and then a demon will sneak up my ass and kill me and my kid and my… baby's mama." He tried not to wince as those last two words came out but he hadn't thought through that sentence.

"You don't even know what to call her, do you?"

"Shut up."

Two Days later…  
(July 26, 2010)

Liz nodded to her father's voice. He was concerned. He was upset. He was a little proud. "So… yeah, Dad… I'm going to stay up here. Dean's going to be around."

"Okay." He nodded into the phone on his end. "Just promise me that you won't marry him just because you're pregnant. If it's not a lasting match, don't try to force it. If you need any help, just ask. And make sure you call your mother twice a week. She's nervous and finding projects. She wants to crochet a blanket for the baby."

"But she doesn't crochet."

"She's taking a class. So… is green okay?"

"Green is fine. It's a boy."

"A boy huh… but… how far along did you say you were?" Jeff frowned as he counted in his head. "Isn't it too early for that?"

"Yeah, it is… about a month early to see in an ultrasound." Liz admitted. There was always going to be a place where she had to stop and tell her parents the truth. It might as well be now. "Apparently… I had a vision and I told the doctor. I don't really remember doing it but… I trust her."

"What does that mean, that you're still having visions?"

"That it's a permanent part of me, Dad."

"Does Dean know about this?"

"Yes, he does. He knows everything I do. He doesn't understand it anymore than I do. He… um… he's been helping me to resolve the issues I sometimes come across."

"So… when Max died, they didn't stop. I mean… you didn't just start getting them again."

"Right." Liz had to mash down all the feelings that she was disappointing her father. "Anyway, Dean's on his way into town, now. We're going to talk and we have… roughly six months to get the details down."

"Yeah… there's a lot of planning and you do need to listen to your mother's advice on it." He took a deep breath. "Jeff is a good name for a boy."

She giggled. "Okay. Your vote will be submitted but I think Dean has his heart set on John."

"John, huh."

"It was his father's name." Liz took a breath. "You and Mom will be the only grandparents," she stated as simply as possible. "So, no worries about competing with the other grandpa, Dad."

"Well, I suppose I'll just hold out for the next boy."

"Dad… can I get through this pregnancy first?"

That sent him into nervous laughter. "I suppose you're right." He was quiet for a moment. "So, it's set in stone then? My grandson is John Winchester?"

"I think so… but of course there is half a year before it becomes official."

"Well, I can't compete with Guardian Angel Grandpa, now can I?"

"Dad, are you pouting?"

Jeff sighed heavily. "I just wish I knew this guy better, sweetie. I've met him exactly twice and he was impersonating a federal officer the first time."

"Yeah… I wouldn't go putting out any announcements with either of our names, Dad."

He shut his eyes and waited but Liz wasn't offering that bit of information. "And why is that?"

"Well, we're both kind of on the FBI's most wanted list."

"Should I ask why?"

"The feds don't know that Max is dead. So they still think I'm an alien."

"And my future grandchild's father?""Well, his record is a bit longer than mine but he's wanted for murder, which he didn't actually commit because he can't be in two places at once. There's armed robbery but again… two places at once, mistaken identities. So, he didn't do it."

"Okay… new rule. I don't want to know anything about Dean Winchester that can't be spoken about in the presence of law enforcement."

"Okay, Dad… I think I hear him pulling up now. I'll call you later."

"Alright sweetie, take care."

Liz took a breath as she hung up the phone. She waited. A car door shut and then there was a light rap before the door swung open. Dean spotted her and nodded. Liz set the phone down. "What'd you do? Speed all the way?"

"Of course." He scoffed at her.

"Tired?""Nah."

"So you made Sam walk to the hotel?" She pointed to the window where Sam was getting his things together to make the two block jaunt.

"He can use the exercise."

* * *

TBC 


	49. Chapter 48

Part 48 – That night…  
(July 26, 2010)

Liz was used to sharing her bed. Max crowded and hugged. Dean stayed in one spot, either hugging the pillow or hugging her as if she were a pillow. This was different. Dean lay next to her but didn't touch her. He stared at her but didn't touch her. "Would you quit it?"

"What?" A smile burst across his face, lighting it up.

"You're staring and it's weird."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Well, not stare for one." Liz rolled onto her belly and tucked her arms beneath her. "Dean? Why me? I mean, why did you pick me to hound relentlessly until I caved?"

"And not one of your friends?" Dean took a breath. "I gotta admit… I walked into Marty's and saw your ass." He grinned unapologetically about his past behaviors. "At which point I came on to you. Then you turned me down and burned me. It only stoked my interest… even after I found out you were married."

"You're not used to being turned down, are you?"

"Not so much."

"Even married women?"

"Sometimes, especially married women." He shrugged. "Then it bugged me cause I recognized you but I couldn't remember where from... Then after I got to know Nate… Max… I didn't care so much but I won't lie and say you became repulsive or something. Once a hot chick… only age can change that. But out of respect, I stopped being an ass."

Propping her chin on a pillow, she absorbed his words while she formulated another question. One she had asked before and he had never answered to her satisfaction. "Why did you kiss me that night?"

"Feeling good. You know having fun again after being possessed. Feeling good and like myself for once. Sam had been on me for weeks to give you a call because he saw something that I didn't. So, I made a move and immediately played it off because usually I follow through and that night… I knew following through would be the wrong thing to do."

"I thought Sam was the one who was the most against your interest in me?"

"Sammy thinks I haven't changed. He wanted you to change me more than I have changed myself. I can't change too much. I have to keep myself detached enough to hunt."

That made her frown. "Is that what you're going to do with your son?"

"I… don't think I can." He frowned and tilted his head up to look at the ceiling. "I mean… My head gets filled with these moments that I had with my dad and I want those moments, too. T-ball and pizza parties. The moments we had as a family before Mom died. Spaghetti night and bedtime."

"Spaghetti night, huh?"

"Yeah… all three of us at a normal hour. With Sammy asleep in his crib." Dean let the ghost of a smile cross his face. "Garlic bread, meat sauce, salad. The whole bit."

"My father and I always worked New Years' together. Senior citizens' New Years'. It came early so the seniors could get to bed early, and we always cleaned until midnight. 18 years of New Years with my dad."

"What kind of tradition would we have? 'Here, Johnny, help Dad pack some rock salt shells.' I don't know that we could have that kind of thing. That I had with my parents, that you had with yours."

"It's going to be what we make of it, Dean." She laid her hand on his shoulder; the scar was still angry looking but didn't seem to cause him any pain. "Whenever we figure that out."

"When did you remember me?" He turned his head to look at her suddenly. "Really."

"Exactly when I told you I did."

"At Bobby's before sending us to Montana?"

"Yeah."

"So… am I a dream come true?"

"No." She caught the flinch in the creases of his eyes. "It's kind of a relief. The things you make me feel are not deep and potentially destroying. They are hopeful and less definable."

"Which means what? We changed time somehow between us all and now… the world's not ending?"

"I don't know. Yes?"

"How?"

"I don't think your dad had died and Max and I were never married but I can't be sure."

"You can tell something like that?"

"I just… know some things. Some things feel more right than others… about what I remember of that dream…" She shrugged. "I know there used to be a light in your eyes. It went away after your dad died. I was still alive so Max must have saved my life but I was healed far more than that… he must have died when we were in high school… But I can't pinpoint when in time it was that you and I found each other."

"How long was my hair?"

"Really short. Like…" She touched his hair. "Like a buzz cut."

"I got my hair caught in a door in '01. After that, I started keeping it shorter." He lightly knocked her hand away, choosing to tug on her mid-length locks.

"Still no clue how we would have met." She let her leg brush against his. "I was sent to a girls' academy in Vermont during my senior year."

"Oooh… Uniforms?"

"You know… some things I should learn to expect and yet… I am still astounded by the inner-workings of your mind."

"What?" He grinned unapologetically, gripping her thigh to stop her movement. "So plaid skirts?"

"Yes, we had uniforms and no I won't find one to wear for you." She covered his hand with hers. "I got into Northwestern. I would have been in Illinois for the '02 fall semester."

"Illinois? Well, we've gone through there a lot." Dean thought about it. "Chicago, big on hauntings. You're were into… teaching?"

"Science. Micro-biology."

"Ech." He groaned. "Lab coats."

"Not sexy?"

"They hide everything."

"They're not meant to be sexy."

"Someone should have taken that into account."

"Your need to find women attractive in every occupation?"

"Yes!"

Two days later…  
(July 28, 2010)

Liz cursed. She hopped and tugged and cursed again. "Dammit!"

Dean snickered but his eyes were only half-open. He was not entirely certain what she was trying to do but it sounded funny. "What are you doing?"

"These jeans fit last week. I know. I wore them. Must have shrunk in the wash."

He pried his eyes open to look. "Those are the tight jeans. I like those jeans."

"Shut up and help me pull up the zipper." Liz tried again to pull the leaves closed and tug up the zipper. She hopped over to the bed and lay back to try it that way. Dean watched with a laugh as she failed again. "Help me."

"You think maybe they just don't fit anymore." When she lay down, he could plainly see that her stomach was protruding just enough that the jeans she had used to seduce him on previous occasions were not going to zip up, no matter how hard she tried.

"I have to work."

"In that specific pair of jeans?"

"Shut up."

Dean rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sat up. He slid his hand over the firm mound. "Be kind and give the boy some room to grow."

"Are you saying that I'm getting fat?"

"No… I'm saying that you're pregnant." He snorted as he took her in where she lay over his legs. "You're not bitching about how tight your shirts are and believe me, they're noticeably tighter."

"No."

"What?"

"I said no." Liz poked him in the chest. "I have to work and I'm not going to be late today. Every time you look at me like that, I end up late to work."

"Well, this is the first complaint that I've heard."

--

Liz swept through her tables before taking a break. She put her feet up in a booth. Marty set a glass of water down for her to drink. She only offered him a grateful half-smile. She hadn't worn tennis shoes in awhile and they took some getting used to again. Her mother had insisted that she stop wearing her heels so high. The thought of her mother, made her smile a bit. If Liz didn't call every other day, she panicked and started filling up the voice mail with frantic messages. They were going to have to make arrangements when the baby was near to due so that her parents could make the trip up.

A few dusty travelers wandered in. Two women headed directly for the bathroom and the men took the booth next to hers. It was late. Only two more hours left in the bar. Liz took a gulp of water, relished her last thirty seconds off her feet and then rose to get the table serviced. She tried not to roll her eyes when they were finicky about the menu. She gave Marty a look as she rattled off the modified orders. Marty just shook his head and ordered her to sit.

The bar was empty except for the travelers. Liz sat at the bar and waited for her orders to come up. Marty waved her off and took the food over himself. When he returned, he leaned opposite where she sat. "I give you and Dean a lot of shit. You grew on me, dammit. Your daddy ain't here and I ain't him but…"

"Thanks Marty." Liz nodded and gave his hand a squeeze.

"He don't know what he's doing but he'll do something."

"I know." She winced suddenly.

"You okay?"

"I… I don't know." Liz sat up where she was slouched over the bar. Marty was already circling around in case he had to catch her. She gasped and gripped the bar top, she felt Marty's hands on her back and then suddenly, he wasn't there anymore. "Marty?"

When she turned, the travelers were on their feet. Three of them were scrambling for the door. Marty lay sprawled across a table. The fourth member of the party turned her head and fixed Liz with a black stare. A literally black stare. Liz's head throbbed as her mind thrust images at her. The barstool was ripped from beneath her, sending her crashing to the floor. The woman approached with a blank expression on her formerly smiling face.

Liz could feel herself sliding forward. "No, no." A table overturned, sending its contents over Liz's head. Something inside her tightened and then her hand shot out for the salt shaker. Hurriedly, she ripped the top off and poured a line on the ground between herself and the woman. Quickly grabbing another, she completed a circle around her. The woman stared at her, then a table flew at Liz's head.

--

Dean laughed as his brother attempted to prove he could do a standing double back flip off a three foot pike outside the motel. Sam snorted and huffed. "This is so stupid."

"You're the one that said you could do it. I already did it. It's your turn."

Sam straightened, kicked his brother for trying to upset his balance, recovered and then set himself into the air. Tucking, he spun twice and landed in a crouch. "See. I can still do it."

"Yeah, okay." Dean nodded and handed over the promised fifty dollars. Then his eyes slid over to the bar where two men and a woman ran out and ducked behind their car. "Sam! Grab the bag."

He tore off across the street and into the bar where Liz knelt inside a salt circle and Marty was pinned against the far wall. He caught a chair as it flew at her. The jukebox went haywire, playing Bob Seger at full blast. The phone began ringing continuously. That's when Dean caught the woman's black eyes. The objects began flying at him. All he could do was use the chair to shield his body and to place that between the possessed woman and Liz. Dean caught the shotgun when Sam tossed it to him. He pumped it with one hand and took aim at the woman. It wouldn't kill her but it would stun her long enough for Marty to get to safety. She roared but Marty did fall to the ground.

Liz felt her vision coming and going as the battle went on around her. As if the lights were flickering, she could see Dean and Sam moving in on the woman. She saw the splash of something followed by the sound of sizzling, the smell of burning, the sounds of pain. She heard the grunts of blows landed. The booms of gunfire. The arms pulling back for swings, the legs kicking.

Her hand came away from her head smeared with blood. Her hands reached for the bag blindly. She flipped through the pages, the shutters falling over her eyes more than once. Her mouth formed the words. She could hear the screaming. The yelling. Still, she spoke the words as if she knew them well. Speaking the Latin as if it were her best friend. Then it all went black.

--

Dean splashed the holy water on the woman just to make sure. She winced at the coldness. "Cristo."

"What?" She wiped off her face.

"She's clean, Dean. Let her go." Sam helped Marty to a chair. Dr. Meyer was on her way.

"Get out of here." Dean told the woman and pointed to the door. Then his eyes fell on Liz, lying across the salt circle with Dad's journal still clutched in her hands. He knelt and carefully checked her out. "Liz?"

"Did you get it? Did you get it?" She barked out though her eyes were still closed.

"Yeah, I got it. You did the hard work though. How'd you know to read that?"

"Jesus, Dean. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to? Hell, I taught you that incantation. Why the hell didn't you pull it out right off? It was obvious what was going on!"

Dean cupped her face between his hands. "Liz. Liz! Open your eyes!"

Slowly her body relaxed and her eyes opened wide. "Where am I?"

He swallowed thickly as he stared at her. "What were you just saying?"

"I… nothing… I didn't say anything." Liz shook her head but it hurt.

"Are you hurt?"

"I don't think so."

"Okay. Lay still. Dr. Meyer is coming." Dean forced the strange words away. Liz was okay. "Good thing I taught you about salt, huh."

"Salt?" She looked up at him. Then she glanced around at the disarray in the bar. When her hand touched the floor, she felt the grains of salt beneath her. "What happened?"

"Tell me what you remember." He spoke softly, shifting her so she could pillow her head on his thigh.

"They came in together. All four. Then out of nowhere, one just… I started to get a vision but I… then I was on the floor and she was throwing things at me… and then you were there and I… don't remember…"

"It's okay. Sh. It's okay. Just lie still. Don't try to get up until Dr. Meyer has a look at you."

"I feel okay."

"I walked in while you were getting furniture thrown at you. Let's just cool our heels for a bit."

"You won't leave me, will you?"

"No, I'll stay right here." He promised, sliding his hand behind her neck for a reassuring squeeze.

"Dean," Sam knelt over them. He gently felt all of Liz's extremities. "She looks fine. Let's get her up off the floor."

"We're waiting for the doctor." Dean shook his head.

"Dean, come on."

"No. We're waiting for the doctor. I think her head got banged up pretty badly." Dean lowered his voice and turned his face up to whisper to his brother. "I think she… something happened. She doesn't remember everything. I don't want to move her."

"Like what?"

"Aside from her sudden knowledge of exorcisms? Her yelling at me the way Dad used to do… I think she needs a doctor."

Sam's eyes flicked down to Liz, who lay still with her eyes closed. "Okay. We'll wait for the doctor. How do you mean? She yelled the way Dad did?"

He lowered his voice even more. "Dude, she almost sounded like him and she… said everything the way he used to. It was more than creepy."

When Dr. Meyer walked in, she ran straight for Marty. She checked his bruises underneath the icepack Sam had given him. She kissed the top of his head and wrapped her arms around him, whispering things no one else could hear. Wiping a tear from her eye, she turned to see what she had run passed. "Lillian? Are you okay?"

"Just a little banged up." Liz offered from her mostly comfortable position. "Bulldog won't let me up."

"If I had a bulldog that looked like him, I just might have to let him hold me down." Dr. Meyer teased half-heartedly as she did her examination. The cut on her patient's head was easily cleaned and dressed. "Any ringing in your ears?"

"No."

"Okay, good. Try sitting up. Dizzy?"

Liz did as told. She shook her head that she didn't feel dizzy. Not even a bit nauseous. She was helped to a booth to rest as Dean and Sam were cleaned up. Marty moved slowly, righting the tables and chairs. He tossed the broken pieces into a pile. He sat down near to her. "You gonna be okay?"

"Yeah, I think so. You?"

"Takes more than a possession to knock me down." Marty took the shot when Dean handed it to him. Together they swallowed down the fiery liquid. "Doc clear you both?"

"Yeah." Liz nodded.

"You stay home tomorrow. Kay? No arguments."

Dean poured himself another shot and sat next to Liz, placing her feet in his lap. "You got it." He ignored her look when he took a third. "I'm drinking for three." She barely laughed and lay back against the wall. "Doctor says we gotta… watch out for… spotting and cramps."

Liz nodded, silently. Marty left them alone. Dean didn't offer anything else or drink more. He leaned on the tabletop and kept one hand wrapped around one of her ankles. He breathed out harshly and filled the shot glass but didn't pick it up. "Dean?"

"It went right for you, didn't it." He nodded to her nod. When she sat up, his arm slid around her body, pulling her across his lap. Her face tucked against his neck, his hand securing her thigh on his lap, her hand massaging the back of his neck. His breathing hitched before he realized his eyes were wet. His arms tightened around her. "Without you and Sammy… I don't have a whole hell of a lot going for me."

"Sh. Sh." Liz nodded and pulled his head down to hers. She brushed his lips softly. "It's okay. I'm okay."

"I'm tired. So tired. I want it to be over." Hot tears slipped down his face. "I'm tired of burying people I know. Tired of watching Sam get broken down piece by piece. Tired of… rescuing people I love."

"Dean. Sh." Liz sniffed loudly and pulled his head down to her shoulder. "Sh. It's gonna be okay. Take me home. Let's get some rest. Take me home."

"Okay." Dean picked his head up and dried his eyes with a sleeve. "Sammy."

"Yeah?" Sam sat up from across the bar, where he pretended he hadn't been watching and straining to listen.

"Come on. Let's go. We need to stick together, tonight. We'll do the research and all that tomorrow." Dean slid out of the booth and hauled Liz up against him. "We just… need sleep, right now."

"Kay." Sam nodded and grabbed their bag and their dad's journal. His eyes flicked from it to Liz but he didn't say anything. They could have that talk tomorrow.

* * *

TBC 


	50. Chapter 49

Part 49 – The next day…  
(July 29, 2010)

When Liz opened her eyes, she could make out fresh circles and lines around doors and windows. She peered closer and frowned at the unfamiliar dusting of materials near the door. Dean sat on the edge of the bed with a cup of something. "Don't ask." She took the cup and peered inside. "It's just tea. Sam made it. It should be safe to drink."

He peered down at her. She hadn't brought up his admission from the night before… but he had also insisted that Sam bunk down on the extra bed. She sipped the tea and tried to sit up. "Do things like what happened last night… do they happen a lot?"

"Yeah… more and more since we pissed off the YED by killing his kids. That's on me. I did the ordering and dispatching on them. He's gunning for me."

"How did you stop it?"

"I didn't… you did." Dean took a breath and looked to where Sam sat at the kitchen table. "You exorcised the demon inside that woman. You sent it to hell. Your Latin is really good."

"I don't know Latin."

"You did last night."

Sam nodded when Liz looked to him for answers. "The best I've heard since…"

"Dad died." Dean finished the sentence.

Liz's eyes flicked to Sam's, who met her with an even gaze and a nod of his head toward his brother. "Oh?"

"You were holding his journal when it happened." Sam explained softly, leading her with the information. "He used to never go anywhere without it. Once we backtracked fifty miles to get the damned thing."

"And that time he thought you lost it." Dean shook his head. His father had not been upset. Upset they could have handled. He was distraught. It wasn't until later that Dean realized that all that remained of home was in that journal. "So you don't remember any of that?"

"No." Liz could say that in all truthfulness. Still, Sam gave her another look. "It wouldn't be the first time, though."

Dean ran a hand over his face and stilled as her words sank in. "I'm sorry, what?"

"It's happened before. Not quite like that but…"

"She yelled at me about the fight. The good fight, like Dad used to."

"It's happened before that, too." Liz met his eyes nervously.

He blinked at her and then turned to look at his brother for a moment. His eyes swung around to her again. "My girlfriend is channeling our dead father and neither of you thought I'd like to know that."

Liz took a breath and motioned for Sam to let her handle it. "It started as a vision of him… he was learning how to text and using that damnable Winchester charm to get it done… Then it was a tone that came out of my mouth without me knowing it. And me doing something subconsciously just knowing it should be done. Whatever last night was… it was surely a progression."

"But why didn't you tell me?"

"I'm gonna…" Sam made a quick exit, offering Liz a supportive half-smile, half-grimace as he shut the door.

"Because, Dean… you… I… I can't control it. I don't know what it means or why it happens and it scares me and you get… So obsessive and especially after what you say happened last night."

"He can't do that." Dean shoved himself to his feet, walking away from the bed with his hands on the back of his head. "I salted and burned his body. He can't haunt."

"I don't know about all that but I'm fairly certain it's him."

"Why didn't you tell me when it started?"

"I'm not even really sure when it started." She sighed heavily and swung her legs off the bed. "I had thought it started the day I felt him die in the Impala but that wasn't him, that was you. The vision I got of him was… last October. Me yelling at Sam happened right after you guys got hurt in New York… The other thing I said, doing things subconsciously… that happened right after I found out I was pregnant…" She took a breath. "I wasn't looking to learn anything about him. I know how he charmed women to get what he needed, how he kept his toolbox, how he felt about you and your brother. Those are things I just know about him."

He turned to look at her. "I don't understand. Is he inside you somehow?"

"I don't think so." The whisper slipped out as she shook her head. "I just can't stop it when it happens."

"Last night, it saved your life."

"I don't remember doing the salt circle… or reading the Latin…" She met his eyes. "I didn't want to tell you because I knew how upset you'd get. It freaked Sam out and… he was your hero."

"I just… want any part of him that's left." Dean admitted. He felt small and lost for the first time since he was a kid. "I've had this hole inside of me where my mom used to be and when Dad died… it got bigger and it's like there's hardly enough of me to keep it together anymore."

"Dean, I don't know how to make that feeling go away. I don't do this on purpose. I can't control it. It just happens."

"I need air." Dean turned and left through the door and didn't stop walking until he was in the middle of the field where he and Liz had consummated their infatuation.

--

Sam reentered the cottage and frowned at the empty room. "Guys?"

"I'm in here." Liz's voice called out. A moment later, she stepped out of the bathroom, drying her hair with a towel. "He's not back yet?"

"I guess not." Sam gave her a painful look. "How upset was he?"

"About as upset as I figured he'd be." She took a seat at the table.

"You know… Dean has always been the one person that I could depend on and… I'm starting to realize that he never had anyone but Dad to rely on." Sam sank down across from her. "I mean, I kind of knew but I didn't pull my weight with him as much as I should have. If anything… I gave him more baggage. Dad wasn't all that reliable but Dean would never say that. He's held himself up since he was four years old and… he saw her die. I… was distraught after Jessica… but I was 23 years old. I knew how to compartmentalize my fears and my feelings and still function. He was four when he saw his mother on the ceiling, burning."

Liz felt the tear slip out of her eye but she didn't say anything. She could almost feel John's pain. It was there. In the room. At the table. A life stolen, too soon. A love, a friend, a mother. She tried to push him away. Tried to keep the man from surfacing.

"Dean was starting to put himself back together. He thinks he has to save me from myself but who is saving Dean?" He scoffed to himself. "I get selfish sometimes and I forget that Dean is not a superhero. He's human and even though he always says he's fine… sometimes he's really not." When he looked up, he was surprised to find that Liz was standing right in front of him. She placed a firm hand on his neck, squeezing gently. "Liz?"

"You listen to Dean. He knows that." She knelt in front of him. "He'll save you. He'll save you all because it's what needs to be done. He knows what needs to be done and he'll do it."

"Dad?" Sam breathed out, light brown eyes filling with tears.

"All you have to do is what he tells you. You listen to your brother. Take care of him the way he takes care of you. Listen to him when it's important, Sammy."

"Dad?" The gasp came from the door.

"You do what he says, do you hear me?"

"Yeah. I will." Sam nodded and had to rush forward to catch Liz as she fell backward.

"Dad?" Dean rushed to Liz's side, taking her from his brother. She opened her eyes and Dean shut his weary eyes. His dad was gone.

"Dean." Sam cleared his throat. When all Dean seemed to be able to do was stare at Liz, Sam reached over and lightly shook Liz awake. "Are you okay?"

"What?"

"It's okay." Dean brought himself out of his daze. "Come on. Get back into bed. Rest."

Sam watched as Dean put Liz first. Taking care of her, making sure she was okay and comfortable before even asking, in silence, about what had happened. Sam could only nod to the look. Then Dean couldn't take it anymore, he left the cottage again but came to a stop in front of the rusted over remains of his former home. The backseat where he'd almost died before the paramedics had arrived. The driver's seat where Sam had lost consciousness. The passenger side where their father had been trapped until they had pulled Sam out. He knew only what he'd been told by whoever could remember before they'd left the hospital behind.

He stared at the Impala. Empty windows and doors, ripped seats and missing gearshift, cracks and dents. Without looking, he knew the engine was gutted because he'd done it himself. His father's car. He'd taken its beating heart out and put it in a new body. He'd often pondered that irony as he wondered if a part of his father's soul had been put back with his own. Maybe it was just a far-gone hope. Wishful thinking that a part of his father was still alive and not in the realm of things he'd have to eventually kill.

"Why not me, huh?" He asked the car. "You got to pick on my pregnant girlfriend? Probably making her think she's losing her mind. She doesn't need a fifty-year-old man in her head. I'm the one that needs your advice. I need it and you're making her organize tool kits, exorcising demons and giving Sam your fatherly advice. What about me?" He laughed humorlessly. "I'm the one who stayed by you. I gave you everything I had. Everything. I'm naming my freaking firstborn after you and you're not talking to me. Why? Hell… last night, you yelled at me but you didn't talk. It's like you never died."

Bitterness. A pill he'd been choking on for years. He waved his hands at the car, wishing he were drunk and not painfully sober. "But hey. Instill fatherly advice in the son who ran away… in the son you said was bound for the dark side. Don't give me anything. You give me one moment and then you die. You sacrifice yourself for a cause that you never told me about. How could you die without filling me in on the details? How dare you put this burden on my head without telling me everything you knew? Tell me that I gotta save Sam or kill him? Tell me you're proud of me but say something like that?"

"You taught me everything you knew about hunting. You told Marty that I was the best shot you had the pleasure to teach. You told Bobby that my Latin was atrocious but that I could recite on cue what needed to be said. You told Caleb that you trusted me with your life. Pastor Jim said you said that if you had to hand pick a soldier for war, that I would be your first choice. Holy, unholy, whatever that it would be me… so why did I have to hear your compliments from them? Why were my lessons so hard? Why treat me like it was all just common sense and I had to catch up? Why did you leave so much else out?

"I know about electrical sockets and diapers and bottle times. Bedtime stories and salt rings and small toys. Bath time prep and table foods… but… how do I do everything else?" Dean frowned at the car. "We talked about sex and protection but you didn't say anything about monogamy. You didn't talk about how to take care of a lover beyond the night. You didn't say anything about raising a boy of my own. Did you think I would die before I got the chance? Did you even give it a thought?"

"Yeah, he did, Dean." Sam intruded on his brother's rant. "He wanted you to have a home. He wanted the hunt over but he wanted to be the one to finish it… your life was just… more important to him than living to kill it himself. He loved us… in his way."

"Which is what?" Dean didn't turn. "Different from the way other fathers love their sons."

"No. Not different. The same. He kept us close. Tried to, anyway. To protect us." Sam offered the words to his brother but his brother was too angry to hear them. "Believe me, it's hard for me to look at things from his eyes. There are plenty of things that he kept from us. Not just information but… we grew up in a screwed up way and that's why you don't have the answers to anything in that cottage, Dean. Maybe it's not Dad's fault. Maybe it's all just because Mom died. You got a hole inside you, imagine the hole inside Dad."

--

Liz sat curled up in the chair by the window when Dean finally returned to the cottage. He sniffed and shut the door behind him. His body was still full of tension. From her posture, he knew she'd been watching his moment with his former car. "I just gotta know… does he pull away when I come near you?"

"I don't know." Liz shook her head. "I don't know."

"It's like… there's a puzzle and I'm the one who has to put it together but nobody will let me see the pieces." He took a step into the room and stared at her. "You're having these visions and these moments where my dad is talking out of you. Sam is having demon visions and all kinds of freaky psychic shit. I'm supposed to solve it all but I don't know how. All I know is that I can kill shit. Evil shit. I don't know how to interpret dreams or visions or… reading a fucking timeline from a world that isn't right here. All I can be is me and that doesn't seem to be enough for anyone. All I can be is Dean Winchester, demon hunter extraordinaire. Not other timeline Dean, not Max Evans, not John Winchester. Me."

"No one's asking you to be someone else, Dean." Liz whispered.

"Well, you know, it feels like it." He scrubbed his hands over his face and tugged at his own hair. "It feels like who I am now is not good enough. Like I have to change in order to make things work."

"I think you're reading too much into what anyone has said." She shifted to face him in a more comfortable position. "I like you the way you are. I tease you about your proclivities for booze and women and sharp pointy things but everything you were before I met you has led you to be the man I met. The man I eventually fell for. It's all inside you. Anything you change about yourself has to be for you, because you want it. I never asked you to change who you are. I only asked how we were going to make this work because I can't raise a child by myself. Not with all the things I now know are in the dark. I can't live without this child but I can't go it alone when I know that there are demons who want me dead now."

"I never said I wouldn't be there."

"Sure, there. You'll be stopping in to rest, to recover, to bond with your child but you will be going to hunt and I will be alone with your son. What if something happens to us? I'm not saying you have to stop hunting but you have to tell me more than you're going hunting. You have to let me know what the dangers are. Include me, is what I'm saying." She rose slowly to cross the room to stand in front of him. "You're so closed off Dean. I don't know how to change that. I can't begin to know where to start. I just need to know if… I need to know if."

Dean slid his hand behind her neck, tangling his fingers in her hair. He stared at her. "I've told you more than I've ever told anyone."

"Maybe but… Dean, you hide so much and I know you said that you had to stay detached but… I need to know if." She fixed her eyes on the collar of his T-shirt. "Am I ever going to hear it, Dean?" His lips brushed hers so softly, she wasn't sure that he had moved at all. "You're the one that told me, Dean. Why would you think that you're the exception?"

"Told you?" His brain reached for whatever in the hell she was talking about while his nose slid against hers.

"Maybe what we've been doing hasn't been dating… maybe we can't put a label on what we've been doing but I think we know what we feel." Her words slurred around the flutter of his lips.

When her words registered, he put them together with his own from nearly ten months earlier. He had known. Somewhere. Liz wouldn't let just anyone touch her, just anyone share her bed, share the intimate moments that he had been privy to… even before knocking her up and storming out on her. Taking her lips in a firmer kiss, he knew what he knew but he couldn't let himself believe it. If she said the words and he didn't say them back, it would kill her. And so she hadn't. Not out loud.

As they turned their slow way onto the bed, he recalled all her silent admissions. A sandwich in the middle of the night even when she wasn't hungry; a well-timed joke when he'd been doing his best to hide he wasn't feeling his best; a red-covered book in his duffle during a fight; smiling indulgence in his hormonal moments which were far more frequent than hers; concessions to his routines though sometimes they clashed with hers.

--

Liz's head rested on his shoulder. Her arm draped over his chest, one of her legs lay between his. She slept and Dean decided right then that it was probably okay that his Dad didn't surface in Liz while he was around. If he dared show up in a moment like this, Dean would have to do an exorcism in a heartbeat. He let a hand slide down her spine and back again. He felt halfway normal for once. Usually Liz slipped to her own side of bed and settled there but she stayed with him this time, practically on top of him. Trusting him.

"Liz?"

"Hmm?"

"Let's go to Lake Tahoe."

"Hmm?" She picked up her head to look at him.

"It's close, I hear it's nice. We can be married by Saturday."

"Dean?" Liz forced her eyes open. She rested her chin on her hand to stare at him as his ramblings filtered into her sleepy brain. "What's the rush, now?"

"Well…" He cleared his throat. "I've just been thinking… there's a lot of untried lore out there… Well, for me, untried and my son is not the way of trying it. I just want to cover my bases."

"Well, that started out sweet…"

"I'm not up on my holier than thou rites but… I just… want to keep you safe."

"Okay." She nodded to his silent admission.

"Illegitimate children are targets for all sorts of demonic activity and so are unbaptized children." He rushed to explain himself but he knew it just sounded strange. "It could be a bunch of hooey to scare God into folks but I can't take any chances. My son will be a target anyway."

She sighed then reached up to run her hand over his hair. "Sometimes I wonder just what goes through that head of yours. You're not as dumb as you would have everyone believe."

"You think I want people to think I'm stupid?"

"I think it works to your advantage most of the time."

"Maybe." He shrugged and smirked.

She shook her head at him. She tried not to smile too broadly as she tried to put his thoughts into words she understood so as to make sure she did understand them. "You want to take care of us, huh?"

"Well, yeah." He secured one arm around the small of her back and the other under her arm, against her shoulders. "How did I end up with you?"

"Dumb luck."

"You wish." He snorted.

"Maybe. You are not a bad guy, Dean. I trust you to do what needs to be done."

Those words so ruined the mood. "You're not my dad right now, are you?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Good, cause he's not allowed to pop in while we're naked."

"That's a good rule. Let's hope he follows it."

"Maybe we should keep him away with lots of… extra examples of…"

"Our physical relationship?"

"Maybe. I'm just saying… it's a creepy thought to have that the woman I sleep with can be taken over by my dead father."

"I agree."

* * *

TBC 


	51. Chapter 50

Part 50 – Saturday  
(July 31, 2010)

What in the hell was he thinking? A wedding? Was he insane? A tux! Hell! A monkey suit! "Sammy, I hate this."

"You said you would do this. It was your idea." Sam watched his brother struggling with his tie and attempted to fix it only to have his hands slapped away. "You said-"

"I know! 'Let's go to Lake Tahoe'…" He cursed under his breath and ripped the tie off. He had been fine all week with his half-assed proposal. Had been fine through the drive. Had agreed to stay in the hotel room until half an hour before getting to the J.P. for the license. He stared at the suit his brother had picked out. "I look like I'm 12."

"Yeah, if 12-year-olds grew beards. I thought you were going to shave that." Sam lightly slapped his cheek, only to have his hand slapped away.

"Well, I can't shave now, can I." Dean griped and turned to his reflection. "What am I doing?"

"Marrying the woman you knocked up." Sam gripped his shoulders and cleared his throat. "Take a deep breath. This is just wedding day jitters." When the shoulders under his hands didn't lose their tension, he added, "Some kind of monster."

"Yeah, okay." Dean dropped his chin to his chest and took a deep breath. He hummed a few bars and took another breath. A few more bars.

"This is not an airplane. This is one day. Taking vows."

"Vow. I like that word." Dean breathed out. "Did you see her?"

"Yeah, I saw her. She looked like she was going to vomit but it could have just been morning sickness."

"Bitch."

"Jerk."

Dean turned to his brother. "It's just a ritual, right?"

"Right."

"I mean, I'm faithful. I practically live there, you know, when we're not killing shit. I'm good as married. I just need the ritual."

"Right."

"If she didn't want to do this, she would have said."

"Right."

"I think I'm gonna hurl."

"Breathe." Sam instructed and turned his brother away from the mirror. "Just breathe."

Dean shut his eyes and took a deep breath. The thousandth since the suit had shown up. "I can do this. Faced demons, faced death. This is just a ritual… minus the Latin."

"Right. I'm gonna go check on the bride."

--

Liz checked her reflection. She could see the shop girl squinting her eyes from the end of the short hallway. Liz chose to ignore her. The dress was a very light, very fine shade of blue. She'd paid but she just wanted to make sure she looked all right. The fabric draped over her slight stomach. Empire waist, v-cut neckline to allow for what she could no longer control on her body. "I'm ready."

"There's a gentleman waiting for you outside." The clerk raised an eyebrow.

"Then it's time." She took a breath and grabbed her bag to meet the guys outside. Sam gave her a supportive smile and squeezed her hand. "Is he ready?"

"He will be. You okay?"

"I think I might pass out." She forced a smile onto her face. "But I'm good."

"Did you eat?"

"No."

"Why not?" Sam escorted her down to the chapel.

"Wedding day jitters?" She winced. "We'll just say morning sickness."

"Are you okay?" Sam frowned at her slightly green face.

"I should have eaten. Baby doesn't like it when I don't eat."

"Weird cravings?"

"Not yet." She laughed and smiled at Dean, who paced the sidewalk in front of the chapel. "You do good work, Sam." She looked him over. He made her smile. "Did that jacket come with those pants?"

"No." Dean shook his head. "But this is me."

Sam rolled his eyes. His brother would get married in jeans and a suit jacket… and unshaven. "Would you two go in there, already?"

"Sammy." Dean turned with a panicked expression. "Where are the—"

"Check your pocket." Sam patted his own breast in example.

"Don't scare me like that."

They rushed up to the small, tasteful altar at the last moment. It was quick but Dean stumbled over his vows and would have passed out if his brother hadn't popped the back of his knee with a quick foot jab. Liz had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. When the officiate hit the end, Dean grinned. He knew how to do this part.

"You may kiss the bride."

"Wipe that smirk off your face." Liz shook her head even as her hand slipped behind his neck.

"Do it for me."

"PG-13 looks better in pictures." Sammy warned as he raised the disposable camera for the wedding shot. There was no way this event was going to go undocumented.

--

Liz stared out over the lake. Sam had gone on, promising he'd be in phone contact if they needed him. Dean sat in a lounge chair with a beer in his hand; looking absolutely the most peaceful she'd ever seen him. "You're staring."

"Never seen you look so… hot."

"I thought you preferred a lack of clothes to total coverage."

"Still, wedding dress. Hot."

"You know, I feel a little bad about the… you know, the monetary coverage for this whole thing." She stepped over to sit on the edge of his chair. He only grinned and shrugged before taking a swig of his beer.

"It's a weekend. Fraudulent charges aren't discovered until Monday." He took a deep breath before he lifted his eyes to look at his wife. Weird. His wife. "I talked to Bobby and I'm gonna help out… you know, for cash."

"Dean Winchester is going to work for wages?" Liz pondered that as she settled herself beside him. "What about hunting?"

"I can do that, too, I guess. Just… safer to keep a low profile for now." Then he weighed the truth in that statement. "On both the hunting scope and in the eye of the FBI. Now is not the time to get myself thrown in jail."

"You're absolutely right." She picked up the camera on the table, she rewound it. "Smile."

"No."

"Smile, dammit." She leaned back into him and raised the camera to capture them both.

"No."

"You're a jerk." She smiled anyway and took the picture. "That's gonna be the wedding announcement and you didn't smile and I'm pretty sure your beer is in the shot." Sliding her foot out of her shoe, she ran it beneath his calf. "Just tell me you weren't scowling."

"I don't scowl."

"You're scowling right now." She set the camera down.

"You do know how weird this is for me, right?" His eyebrows were set in a deep V as his eyes ran over his bride. His wife. "I'm married to a great girl. I'm gonna be a father… and I'm honeymooning in Lake Tahoe. It's too frickin' normal."

"Dean, it's okay to like it. The normalness of it. You ever think it might be a little weird for me? I'm married to a demon-hunter, I'm gonna have his baby… and my father-in-law likes to slip out of heaven to butt in on my day to day life." She turned to lean on her elbow next to him. Something slipped over his eyes. "What?"

He took a long pull off his beer. "Not heaven."

"What do you mean 'not heaven'?"

"Dad is not in heaven. He sold his soul. That's a one-way ticket to hell."

"Oh." That painted a whole different picture in her head surrounding her John-spells. She found herself fiddling with the charm around his neck. "What is this thing? It looks like a melted dolphin."

"It's a talisman… for protection. My Dad got it on a hunt and he gave it to me."

"I think it's broken."

"What makes you say that?"

"You get dropped on your head a lot."

"Not true."

"If I shaved your head, there would be a roadmap of bumps and scars."

"Maybe."

"Dean, I'm going to get comfortable. I'll need some help with my dress."

He frowned suddenly and looked at her. "You didn't need help to put it on."

"But I need your help to take it off." She shook her head at his blank expression. "If I have to explain my subtext… I'm going to think you're possessed." She sat up and began tugging on his arm. "If I have to call Sam back here, he'll be enjoying the honeymoon instead of you."

--

Dean felt stupid but the goofy kind of stupid that could be excused in the future because of the circumstances. He lay between Liz's legs, supporting his body on his elbows on either side of her hips. The barely-there rise of her belly supported his chin while he put his words together. His eyes flicked up to where Liz was dozing while waiting for him to make his first proclamation to the baby. "What do you say to a fetus?"

Her lips turned up into a smile but she didn't open her eyes. "I don't know."

"Listen kiddo, your dad sucks at this stuff. Hold on a minute." Dean muttered and rested his forehead on her stomach. She giggled and swiped a hand beneath his chin to tug on his short beard. He shut his eyes and thought, really thought, about what becoming a father would mean. "My life sucks, kid… so yours is going to suck pretty hard, too. There's lots of crazy crap going on and you're not going to understand any of it until you're in the world a long time. There's a lot of scary stuff but it's my job to make sure the scary stuff goes down screaming."

"You're already scaring him."

"Nah. He's a Winchester. He'll eat scary for breakfast." He lifted his head then flicked his gaze to the cart of empty plates beside the bed. "And whole cows." He lowered his head to her stomach again. "Your mother put away a whole cow tonight, son."

"I did not." Liz gasped and kneed him in the ribs. She propped herself up on her elbows. "You know what, I'm not sure I should let you speak to our son. He'll pick up nothing but bad habits."

"Like all your habits are so great." Dean met her eyes but didn't let her up. "Walking home alone, flirting with bikers and truckers," he held up a hand to tick off what he found to be her annoying characteristics, "The absence of a television in a town without a movie theater or a sports bar, an addiction to Oprah's book club, putting the hunting knives in with the steak knives, shuffling your feet over the thresholds-"

"I kicked the salt line, once." She poked him in the forehead with a finger.

"And you're abusive."

"I'm abusive? Who threw who in the dirt?"

"You wanted training. You can have a nice guy teaching you self-defense or you can have a badass who actually knows what he's talking about." Dean slid his arms up the bed, trapping her beneath him with his body. The smile faded off his face, his eyelids lowered. "If you hadn't had that vision… do you think we'd be doing this now?"

"I don't know."

"I came onto you looking for an escape from pain and you slammed the door in my face, with good reason. What if we met in other circumstances? Without your alien crap, without my supernatural crap?"

"I don't know, Dean." She frowned at the tone in his voice.

"I don't see how I get to keep this. I feel like shit for ruining the night but I don't get to keep things like this. They always go wrong."

"You think I get to keep the good things?" She lifted his face so she could see every worry line, every crease and crinkle and those ridiculous Maybelline eyelashes. "I couldn't begin to tell you the things I've sacrificed. I'm drawing a line in the sand. I get to keep this."

"You'll be a widow again. I don't know when but it will happen."

"Well, then you're just going to have to stay on top of your game. I'm not raising our son alone."

"So, who's husband number three?"

"You're so not funny."

"Come on."

"No."

"It's a little funny." He tossed her a grin.

"No, it's not."

"Liz, come on. It's funny."

"Sam."

"What?" Dean reared back onto his knees. "What?"

"Why not? I like him fine." She propped herself up on her elbows once more. "We wouldn't be married long. If you're dead, he'll avenge your death and I'll have to pick husband number four pretty fast."

"Okay, now you're not funny." He dug his fingers into her side.

"Then don't ask stupid questions." She shrieked as she tried to escape but he had her pinned once more. "That's not fair. You're stronger than I am and you've had way more training."

"Well, we'll have to catch you up… but later, when you aren't harboring life inside you."

A week later…  
(August 7, 2010)

Liz tugged on a skirt and pouted as it didn't sit the way she wanted. She nodded absently to the phone. "I knew he wouldn't smile."

"He still looks handsome… and relaxed." Nancy stared at the picture. The only wedding picture she had of her daughter. "Very relaxed."

"It's better than the picture Sam took at the ceremony. Both of us were… jittery." She scoffed as she reached for another skirt. "None of my clothes fit right."

"I can't see any tummy on you in these pictures."

"Well, it's there and it's here and it's bigger than it was last week." She paused to look at her reflection. "I think I felt him moving the other day. It was the strangest feeling ever. I kind of thought I was going to be sick."

"It's fine now, but wait until he starts kicking." She took a breath and held it for a moment. "What made the two of you decide to get married? I thought it was something that you weren't going to discuss."

"It just started to make more sense, Mom. Dean and I are never sure what we're doing. He's settling in here, he's got a job at Bobby's. We've got to try."

"Do you love him?"

"I think so. I'm not used to loving just anybody and… Dean makes me feel more normal than I have in a long time, even with all the distinctly abnormal parts of both our lives."

"Maybe you see something that no one else sees."

"No, I see what you saw but I know him. I trust him. I guess, I just see what's going on when he's smiling so bright it blinds you."

"He seems broken to me."

"I know." Liz took a breath and pulled on a pair of Dean's shorts before sitting in the chair by the window. "Dr. Meyer is going to do an ultrasound the next time I go in. I'll send you a copy."

"Maria wants me to scream at you for not inviting her to your wedding." Nancy sighed and fingered the edges of the photo in her hand. "I could yell myself but I figure there must be a reason for eloping."

"Yeah. Sorry, Mom. We had to get the license after working hours and do the ceremony before… FBI, you know… they have my name still." She left out the fact that Dean's charges were current and very bad. "We'll work something out in January because I want you there."

"I want to be there."

"I want you to see him in person before pictures, you know."

"Liz…" Dean raised an eyebrow at her outfit but let it go as he entered the cottage with filthy hands and an oil-smeared face. "Marty needs you to work tonight."

"I don't have clothes." She pointed to his shorts covering her rear.

"Then you tell him."

"I'm on the phone with my mother."

Dean winced and backed toward the kitchen, hands in the air. "Tell her to put the shotgun down. I did the honorable thing."

"Shut up. I thought you were working."

"Lunch break." He grinned as he hauled out leftovers.

"Sorry, Mom. Dean is getting grease all over my kitchen." She spoke into the phone, then lowered it. "Wash your hands."

"It sounds like you've got your hands full. I'll talk to you later, sweetie." Nancy shook her head with a small smile.

"Kay, Mom. I'll call you when I get the ultrasound." Liz said her goodbyes and found Dean staring at her. "What?"

"You just started stealing my underwear?"

"I should just start walking around in my underwear?"

"The difference between yours and mine being?"

"The difference between bikinis and boxer briefs." She tugged at the cloth covering her thighs. She set her cell phone down before rising to watch him devour leftover hamburger helper. "I have to go shopping." She rolled her eyes and absently covered her belly where it peeked between his shorts and her tank top. He grinned at her suddenly and looked away when she blinked at him. "What?"

His only response was the grin around the mouthful he'd just forked in. She set her jaw. "What?" He shook his head, grinning. "Dean. What?"

"It's pretty hot. The whole… belly thing."

"Shut up."

"Look. Billy gives me all kinds of shit." Dean let out an exasperated breath. "Now, you look pregnant. Maybe he'll back off."

"So you're happy that I'm getting fat."

"You're not fat. That's not even a football."

"This is keeping my pants from fitting."

"Keep telling you that no pants is the way to go."

"Only if I intend to spend the rest of my pregnancy on my back."

"That could be arranged."

"Shut up."

* * *

TBC 


	52. Chapter 51

Part 51 – A week later…  
August 16, 2010

Dean tossed the ratchet into the tool box. He was going to have a throw down with the creep, job or no. Bobby stepped between the two men. "James… let it go… He's the best mechanic to have on your car."

"Why's that?" James glared right over Bobby's head at Dean.

"You see that Impala." Bobby watched James' eyes slide to the shiny black car and linger there. Just what Bobby wanted. "It's been totaled at least six times and this kid right here… he gets it back to looking like that in no time at all."

"Totaled?" James asked, his eyes still narrowed on the 'kid' in front of him.

"Last time, it rolled three times. Time before that, it was T-boned by a semi." Dean answered. Bobby was doing him a favor. Letting him on the job for cash on the side. Saving his ass from a whooping and costing the garage a hefty commission in keeping up with James' expensive taste in classic cars.

"Fine, but you tell me my business again and we're gonna dance." James snapped his fingers at Dean before stomping off.

Dean rolled his eyes as Bobby turned to face him. "Look, he's stripping the gears. I don't care if he's got more money than God, he'll run through every part we can find for his fucking pussy-mobile."

"One job a year from him means I can take off for three months if I feel like it, Dean. You treat my customers with respect." Bobby advanced on the Winchester. Just like his old man. "I don't have to keep you on and I don't have to keep covering your ass. Grow up, you're going to be raising a boy of your own soon enough. Trust me… it's a tough job if you're not going to buckle down yourself." He turned to pick up the carburetor he'd been working on. "I don't know how your daddy did it on the road the way he did. I gotta admit that the two of you came out halfway decent but… I had a hard enough time staying in one place… without demons breathing down my neck."

"You had a kid?" Dean picked up the ratchet and fiddled with it for a moment.

"Yeah, I had kids once. Been married twice, Dean. I had two kids… one in each marriage and both of them are dead." He handed the carburetor to Dean. "Finish that up for me. I'm going for a walk."

"Bobby…"

"Kid, that was a long time ago. Maybe I don't agree with what your daddy did to you but I understand it. You take care of your son, Dean… no matter what."

--

Liz pushed herself onto a stool next to Sam, who was poring over his laptop. "Looking for leads?"

"Yeah, I mean… I can't just give up." Sam shrugged. "How's Baby Winchester?"

"He has discovered that kicking my bladder is fun for one of us… and that one is not me."

He laid a large palm on her belly and waited. It wasn't as strong as he was expecting but then, he'd never done this before. "Wow."

"Yeah. Dean likes to encourage these feisty moments." Liz rolled her eyes. "I don't know what it is about his voice that makes the baby so rowdy."

"I think I read somewhere that in utero, babies only hear deep registers but once they're born, they only hear the higher registers."

"So, I have a chance to make an impact before Dean can after he's born." She grinned through a grimace as the baby delivered another swift kick to her gut. "Okay. No more touching. You're winding him up."

"Is he really getting that active?"

"I'm just not that used to it is all. He gets going and I get a little nauseous. I just stopped puking every evening… not looking for that perk to make a comeback." Liz groaned because, as if on cue, Dean strode into the bar with a handful of change. He slid all the coins into the jukebox and punched a series of buttons before hitting the bar to greet his wife and his brother and then placed his hand on Liz's belly. The baby returned the greeting with an enthusiastic kick. "Come on, no."

"Today's lesson, kiddo." Dean took the beer when it was handed to him. "Houses of the Holy. Bonham rocked everyone's socks off. The Song Remains the Same. Dancing Days. D'yer Mak'er. Truly awesome."

"Come on… 40 year old rock." Sam griped. "You'll poison him. He's not even fully formed yet and you're killing his brain cells."

"Dude, I totally checked out what he's supposed to look like and like… a few weeks ago, he looked like an alien. I am so amped for this… what's it called?"

"Ultrasound." Liz supplied.

"Right." Dean snapped his fingers and lightly pressed her belly to get a series of kicks from his son.

"Stop doing that." Liz put her hand over mouth. "Okay, I'm gonna be sick."

"Have some mercy on her." Sam punched his brother in the arm.

"I don't think it's about him talking or touching anymore." Liz stretched her back against the bar. "Crap, I think it's the music."

"Bonham strikes again." Sam shook his head. "I have this theory that Mom and Dad had nothing but Zeppelin playing while she was pregnant with him."

"And why not?" Dean frowned at his brother. "I am the coolest person you know."

"Dean, go turn it off."

"But this is the best part."

"Turn it off or your coveralls get a bath." She gulped and took a deep breath.

"Yeah." Dean cleared his throat and popped out of his seat with his beer. He hit a button on the jukebox and Liz sighed a breath of relief as her internal tormentor quieted. "Better?"

"Yes." She rubbed her belly and the rowdy boy still moved but much slower as a Bad Company song lulled him into a calmer mood. "He likes this."

"Of course he does." Dean nodded with a grin. "Paul Rodgers kicks ass."

"You're a fucking encyclopedia of useless and outdated music, you know that?" Billy called down the bar. Kyle jerked his hand at Billy but was ignored. He tossed a shrug at Liz.

"What are you? 12? What do you know about music?" Dean shook his head and sipped his beer.

"Don't start." Liz whispered and shoved herself off the bar stool. She went about collecting the empties from the tables and noting requests for refills.

"See, this is why I chose to get my cash from a library… no interaction with people." Sam muttered as he sipped his beer.

"Shut up." Dean punched his arm.

"You cost us James… and the shop shuts down… one mechanic at a time. Last hired… first fired." Billy continued to taunt.

"Shut the fuck up, Billy." Kyle stepped in. "Right after he gets canned, then you get canned… and if the places gets back in an upswing… he'll get hired back before you."

"Fuck yeah." Dean tipped his beer to Kyle.

"Cause he's in with Bobby?" Billy scoffed.

"Cause he's a better fucking mechanic. You didn't know what to do with James' fucking Mustang. You rag on his music but only someone who knows the tunes, knows the era and can fix the car." Kyle finally got it. Why Liz had never really liked Billy. Billy was an ass when he was pissed.

"Whatever."

Slipping through the tables with a pitcher, Liz tried to tune them out. When she turned she could see Dean sitting at the bar with the top half of his coveralls tied off around his waist. The lines of his shoulders popped beneath his undershirt. Setting her pitcher down beside him, she slid her arms around his waist. "Tomorrow, we're in Baxter. No shit from him."

"Yeah." Dean nodded.

"And no fighting." She rubbed his ribs before scooting off to tend the bar with Marty.

"No promises." He muttered before taking a long pull on his beer.

Liz ignored him and all the others sitting up at the bar. She had swelling feet and an aching back. She picked at a plate of cheese fries as she tallied Marty's books. She had so thoroughly blocked out the guys, she never realized when they had moved outside until she saw Marty make a break for the parking lot. That's when she noticed the entire bar was empty. "No." Liz burst out the bar doors to see a cloud of dust rising in the night air. "Dean!" She shoved her way into the circle surrounding the fight. It was clean so far but it could get ugly because she knew about Dean's training and Billy didn't. "Dean, stop it!"

"No big. Just teaching the pup a lesson." He called back as he swung and connected with Billy's nose.

"It's okay, Lil." Bobby came up behind her. "It was bound to happen sooner or later."

"This is completely ridiculous." She turned to the older man. "Stop it." He shrugged at her. "They're not stupid teenagers anymore."

"No… they're stupid adults. Immaturity… no cure for it."

Liz winced as Dean's lip split open. "Billy's being toyed with."

"Yes, he is." Bobby agreed as Dean grinned and spit the blood out of his mouth. A second later, he'd swept Billy's feet out from under him and set a foot against his throat. "Well, that was hardly worth the waiting."

"Dean Winchester, do not kill him." Liz burst into the circle and jerked her husband off of Billy. "We're going home."

"Li—"

"Enough! We're going." Liz dragged him across the street and down the road and around Bobby's house.

"Liz, come on. It's a stupid fight."

"I know!" She sniffed. "It's stupid. What do you get out of beating someone's head in?"

"Exercise." He immediately wished he hadn't chosen humor in that moment. He handed her the keys to the Impala. She fished the first aid kit out of the trunk and set about getting out the important tools for fixing his face. "I'm fine."

"I have to kiss these lips," She dabbed at them with a swab and felt a sick satisfaction at his wince, "I like them scab free." Dabbing some blood off his cheekbone, she took a deep breath. "Seriously, why do you let him rile you up like that?"

"Because he never shuts up."

"He's a bully… and you bullied him. Congratulations." She deadpanned while she examined the bruise forming around his temple. "He got in a couple of good ones."

"He's gonna have a body bruise from his landing."

"Yeah. You go. You tripped him."

"I'm the winner, here." He narrowed his eyes at her. "I'm the one defending my lady's honor and I won. Honor preserved."

"Really?" She popped the end off some ointment and applied it to his cuts. "My honor was besmirched?"

"Well… mine but yours by association. I couldn't let it slide… that's why no one broke it up."

"Well, then… I guess you're not out a bed tonight after all."

"We get a TV and I don't have to get my entertainment in the bar."

"Shut up."

The next day…  
(August 17, 2010)

"Dean. Don't touch that." Liz chided as she examined the room from the table where she sat in the uncomfortable paper gown.

"Why do they need all this crap?"

"I'm sure everything has a purpose."

"What in the hell is this?" He picked up a metal contraption.

"That's a speculum… put it down."

"What the fuck is it for?"

"To open me up."

"What?"

"Put it down." She stared at him for a minute. "Sit. Sit down."

"So… why'd you get all weird about the blood sample?" Dean sat in the chair against the wall and frowned at the model of a uterus on the shelf.

"Cause I don't know what being a changed human being does to my blood chemistry but I caved cause they're only checking for hormones."

"What does that even mean?"

"My last husband was an alien who looked like a human… you're… what are you? A Zombie?"

"I think not. Zombies take orders. I don't take orders." Then he scoffed. "And you?"

"Alien resurrection."

"Deal with a demon resurrection… I'm not a zombie."

"Anyway… I haven't checked my blood in years. I don't know if I leave any clues behind that I shouldn't." She took a deep breath. "I just wish the doctor would come back already."

--

Dean's hand gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles shone white in the afternoon sun. "Routine, my ass."

"I'm sure it's nothing."

"You got an order to take it easy."

"It's a concern, not a diagnosis. The baby's healthy. I've got high blood pressure." Liz tried to make it sound like no big deal. "But that's no wonder… you make it rise constantly. Picking fights and getting rolled in your car… I just… gotta lay off the stress." She saw he wasn't calming down. "Pull over at a copy place… I promised my mother I'd make her a copy."

Dean steered the car into a parking spot and just sat there until she returned. He stared through a pair of women who were sitting at a café enjoying their coffee and not worrying about taking it easy. A pair of women who probably didn't know what preeclampsia was and weren't at risk for it if they didn't take it easy. They probably didn't know about the aliens or the demons or the spirits or any of the other monsters he routinely slaughtered; forget the medical marvels that could throw a monkey wrench into the works. When the car rocked and the door shut once more, he was still staring through the pair and Liz wasn't saying a word.

"Dean, here." Liz set a copy in his lap. He picked it up and held it to his eyes, tearing his gaze away from the women in their tailored clothes over slim bellies. Liz rubbed her belly as she watched him study the copy. "He's healthy so far. That's good."

"Yeah." Dean nodded to the blurry image of his offspring. Confirmation from the doctor that Liz wasn't just running off at the mouth when she said she knew things. A boy, due in mid-January. "I didn't want a baby brother, you know. I wanted a puppy."

"What?" She frowned at him and then laughed as she absorbed his words. "Why?"

"I always wanted the puppy but when they told me that I was gonna have a little brother or sister… I tried to negotiate for a puppy instead. It didn't really fly over." He shrugged as he traced the outline with his eyes. "Dad sat me down and had a talk about responsibility and what being a big brother would mean. Sort of a briefing of the road to come for us. Then he took me out for an ice cream and we talked about T-ball for the rest of the afternoon. Guess it was his way of telling me that it would be okay."

"I'm freaked out, too."

"Then it's not just me, huh."

"No."

"Come on. If we're not back by nightfall, Sammy'll be climbing the walls."

"He's doing better, you know."

"Yeah." Dean shrugged and threw the car into gear. "Seriously though, he needs to stop sleeping around… all those chicks are going to end up dead."

"That's not funny."

"Maybe he's not sleeping around but any girl he does fuck ends up on the receiving end of YED torture."

"Dean… seriously. It's not funny. Do not EVER say anything like that to him. You'll traumatize him and he'll… end up in a monastery."

"Good. No one ever got killed with a bunch of praying monks around."

"You're the king of late night horror flicks… there were several where that happened."

"Must have missed that one. We need a TV so I can catch up."

"Dean…" Liz sighed and then spotted the pawn shop sign. He thought he was so slick. "Fine. Pull in. You have ten minutes to pick one out."

"See, I knew you were understanding." He whipped them into the parking lot.

* * *

TBC 


	53. Chapter 52

Part 52 – A month later…  
(September 17, 2010)

Liz took a deep breath and sighed it out before cracking her eyes open. It was just after dawn. What had woken her up? Feeling behind her, she found only cold sheets. After a quick shower and finding something to munch on, Liz focused on figuring out what had woken her up so frickin' early. Then she heard the grunts. Then a loud curse. Cautiously, she followed the noises outside and into the junkyard. Sam and Dean, sweating and beating the crap out of each other… playfully.

Sam landed on his back but rolled and sprang to his feet in time to catch Dean's fist and use it to shove him back. "Come on, old guy. Kick my ass."

"Bring it on. You're holding back."

"I'm afraid I'll break one of your brittle old bones."

"Who spent half of the last year in a cast?"

"Shut up."

She watched him spar with his brother. They kicked up the dust. She watched the goofing and grinning of the Winchester men turn into fierce masks of focus. The banter cooled and was replaced by curses and oofs. She sank down onto a car missing its trunk lid. They were getting pretty serious with their punches. She almost wanted to break it up but neither one really seemed to be breathing very hard.

Sweaty and dirty, Dean dropped into a chair and yanked a bottled of water from a nearby cooler. Sammy walked around to cool his muscles. "You're going to knot up."

"Am not." Dean bit out.

"Will, too. Stand up and stretch it out."

"I've been doing this a few years longer than you have. I don't need tips from Sasquatch."

"You boys been at this long?" Liz called over from her perch.

"Keeping in shape." Dean answered but didn't meet her eyes.

"I'm going… to go… walk it off." Sam grabbed a bottle from the cooler and disappeared out of earshot.

"So… what's going on?"

"Just… keeping sharp. No big." Dean shrugged and took a long chug off the bottle. "No visions?"

"Nothing big. Stupid little stuff. Broken glass warnings and ant infestations. It's a little weird but nothing a can of Raid or a broom can't handle."

"Good."

"You want to let me in on what's going on in your head?"

"Sam got a lead on something in Utah. Quick thing. I'll be back by Monday, probably."

"Oh…" She nodded stiffly. "Okay."

"It's fuckin' weird." He blurted out. "Checking in. I just wanted to take off."

"You know that blood pressure thing the doctor was talking about? It would have sky rocketed if you had just taken off. Just… keep me informed. The fewer surprises, the better." Liz cautioned as she eyed him warily. He was as locked up as ever.

"Sammy said as much. I don't know how he got so smart… not from me and Dad."

"Just tell me stuff, Dean."

"Goes both ways… If you… just…" He cursed under his breath. "Just make sure there's always someone around. If you have a vision by yourself… half the time you're falling over tables and chairs."

"I'll try."

--

Liz stared at her closet. She had packed away her tight clothes, which had given Dean more room but with the bag he'd just packed, most of his things were gone. Pulling his favorite shirt out, she slipped into it before he could take it with him. She could hear the slide of the whetting stone against his blades as he sharpened them. Sam walked in and dropped a bag on the floor. Then she could hear the punch of a reloading press and the soft sound of rock salt hitting the floor. "Don't make too big a mess."

"I'll clean it up before we go." Sam called back without looking up. "How did we get so low on supplies?"

"It's been a while." Dean muttered, glowering at his blade as he swiped it over the stone again and again. "We came here straight from a hunt and we never bothered to restock."

"I'll check the first aid kit." Liz turned to face them, they were both engrossed in their tasks. That's when she noticed the books that Sam had piled onto the table when he had entered. He was loading and pressing shells between reading sentences and turning pages. "What's all that?"

"Research." Sam answered without stopping either activity.

"What are you hunting?" She refilled their kit from the one in the bathroom; she could always refill that one at her convenience after they were gone.

"A jackalope." This time it was Dean who answered. "It's confusing the tourists and they're getting lost… so, we're going to hunt it down."

"Very funny." She glared at him.

"What?"

"I know what a jackalope is." Sam remained silent. He stared at them, wondering what Dean had told her about what they were doing. Liz grabbed the book off the table. He didn't stop her though Dean glared at him something fierce. "This is a history book."

"Yeah." Dean slapped his thigh with the flat side of his blade before sliding it into the case. He began packing the filled shells into a case.

"J.W. Hardin?"

"So mean, he killed a man for snoring." Dean nodded.

"This isn't Utah, Dean. This is in El Paso." She rounded the table to tower over his seated form.

"Maybe I lied."

"Dammit, Dean… If something had happened or I needed to get to you…"

"Look… The saloon where he was shot… It got flooded or something. Whatever the structure built over the original… it got damaged and Hardin woke up. It's a hotel and there's been a rash of unsolved murders… and the unlucky sons of bitches snore." Dean told her with a straight face. "We're going."

"No… you can't. You snore and you don't even know where he's buried."

"I don't snore."

"Yes, you do… both of you snore. You're not hunting down a ghost who kills people who snore."

"Somebody's got to and we're the only ones with a heads up. It shouldn't be that hard to find his grave… The dude is famous."

"We just had a talk about…. Talking. I could kill you." Liz slapped him upside the head and then rushed outside to get some air.

Sam shook his head at his clueless brother. "You're in the doghouse."

"Shut up." Dean muttered.

"You should have just told her the truth."

"Look… I said Utah cause… there's hardly anything I can think of there… I tell her El Paso and she's doing research on her own and there's a hell of a lot more than J.W. Hardin to hunt there, I'm sure…" Dean took a deep breath. "I didn't want her to worry. The doctor said her blood pressure… fuck!" He stood and kicked the chair.

"Next time, just tell her the truth."

"Maybe."

"We're leaving at nightfall… can't let someone else get killed."

"I know…" He kicked the chair again and slipped out the door to find his wife. He found her staring off over the junkyard with her arms crossed over her belly. "Sorry."

"I don't need you treating me like glass, Dean. I'm not going to break if you have to go on a hunt. I know they're all dangerous and each one could put me out of a husband and a father for my child. I know that… it's not going to stop me from worrying."

"Well, we're going… I'll make sure all the lines are fresh before I go."

"Dean…"

"Yeah?"

"Check in… and I mean it."

The Next Day…  
(September 18, 2010)

Kyle just shook his head at the duo. He knew his girlfriend was driving Liz crazy but glad that Liz let her do it. Betty Lou had the entire table covered with baby magazines. He watched her trace her fingers over the baby clothes. "Have you bought anything yet?"

"Not really." Liz shook her head at his question. "I guess we're still getting in the groove of being together."

"How's that working out?"

"Fine… when he's not getting into fights."

"Billy started it."

"I know." She shook her head and flipped a page in the catalog. "It's the halfway point, you know… I should start getting some things."

"We need to throw you a baby shower." Betty Lou announced.

"I don't really know that many people and I'm not going to make strangers buy me things." Liz pushed the catalog away. "I mean… all I really need is a crib and blankets and clothes."

"And diapers and a diaper pail and bottles and nipples and a breast pump if you want to keep up breast milk feedings after you wean him…" She trailed off as she realized they were staring at her. "What?" They just blinked at her. "I have cousins… I've been to a zillion baby showers. You wouldn't believe all the supplies you need in order to just house a baby."

--

Dean scoped out the area for weak points they could enter to get into the graveyard come night fall. Sam had done most of the leg work on the phone on Friday using the premise of a graduate paper. The drive was the killer part. "What do you think?"

"Judging by the graffiti on that overpass… I'd say that security is lax." Sam tilted his head to read the scrawl better. "What is that… 'Benjamin'?"

"Pendejo." Dean corrected. "You need glasses or something?"

"Something written underneath it…"

"Another obscenity." Dean waved off his brother and sipped his coffee. "It's friggin' September… why is it so friggin' hot?"

"Cause we're in the desert oasis of…" Sam's eyes turned toward the river. Artificially green in some areas, the brown shell of smog over the city was disturbing. "Oasis might be stretching it."

"That's so gross." His eyes followed the same reddish-brown skyline. "And we're breathing that shit in."

"All our minerals in one breath." Sam tore his eyes off the sky and turned to face the city, hustling and bustling… but casually so. "Mountains are nice."

"I hear a lot of those houses are haunted." Dean gestured to the West where the houses were built big and bright.

"You told her Monday."

"Shut up."

"I'm just saying and you were right… we could spend an eternity finding spirits to burn here… on just this side of the border. Who knows what's going on over there?" Sam gestured towards the river and the fences on both sides. "I hear there's a serial killer. Decades of unsolved murders, mostly young women who work in the factories. You know they're going to get pissed eventually and no one's caught the guy yet."

"How do you know the killer is still alive?" Dean countered. "Could be the guy's ghost offing all those chicks."

"We're here for John Wesley Hardin… that's it. We're doing the burn tonight and then we're going home."

"Is that what it is? Home?" The words came out haltingly. His expression unsure.

Sam took a breath. "Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah… just a lot of changes… and I don't really know that I'm up for them. We still got our demon to hunt and I'm not sure sitting still is going to do us any good."

"You ask her if she'd come out with us?"

"Liz has already made it pretty clear that if I want to go… driving around hunting… that…"

"She won't come." He finished for his brother.

"Yeah… and John will stay with her… and I don't think I can be away from him once he's born… you know? I already have this idea in my head that I'm going to be a good father and I can't if I'm not there with him." He took a deep breath, then looked to his little brother. "I know that I'm going to kill that demon…. But how I'm going to do it and keep them safe?"

"We'll find a way. I'll help." Sam scoffed at himself. "Dude… what's got you so worried?"

"Nothing really. Liz's got these factors that don't look good but there's nothing to do but wait and hope she doesn't develop any other ones." Dean shook his head. "And I'm not helping. I think I am but I'm just making it worse. I don't know… I needed to get out and kill something… so, let's do that."

"Okay."

--

Marty laughed and gestured to Bobby. "You hear this? Hardin's spirit's all woke up and angry… and killing folks that snore."

"I thought he only killed one guy for that." Bobby scratched his head. "I'll be damned… wasn't his anniversary last month?"

"Or thereabouts… been what? Almost two hundred years."

"Not quite… about 25 years off." He snorted. "That where them boys went?" Liz nodded, already bored with it. "Lucky bastards…"

"To snuff a famous spirit?" Liz leaned on the bar.

"Well, yeah. J.W. Hardin, so mean he shot a man for snoring."

"Yeah, I heard that already." She rolled her eyes. "I think even my dad knows who that is."

Marty looked up when the door opened, then quickly smoothed his hair down. Liz bit her lip against a smile when she saw Dr. Meyer enter the bar. Bobby cleared his throat and nudged her lightly as Marty rushed over to casually greet her and invite her to a booth with a bottle of whiskey from the back shelf.

"When he is gonna be a man and admit that he loves her?" Liz shook her head at the sight.

"When hell freezes over." Bobby answered. "That's how all hunters are… or should be. Play cards close to their chests. If you let yourself admit to something like that, it's real in your head and no matter how hard you try to suppress it… a demon can and will pull it out and use it against you."

"Really."

"Common knowledge. Dean and Sam say that Shapeshifters are a bit on the omniscient side, too."

"They just reach in and grab?"

"The more you try to hide it, the easier the grab."

She pinned him with a look. "How dangerous is going after a dead gunslinger?"

"Could be a simple salt and burn or… really hard if the gunslinger catches wind before they finish the job." Bobby shook his head. "If people thought he was a mean son of a bitch while he was alive… two hundred years of death aren't going to improve on that disposition."

"Is there anything you don't know about?"

"I can't knit."

The next day…  
(September 19, 2010)

Sam sipped his coffee as Dean came to. "Liz was right… you do snore."

"Do not."

"If that dude snored like you… no wonder Hardin put a bullet in him."

"Shut up." Dean felt around for his phone. He hit the speed dial and waited for the pick up. "Hey… yeah, just woke up… yeah, I know. We'll be on the road in about an hour… I know… Tell him I'll be in on Tuesday… Liz… Liz, I'm tired and I'm gonna make Sam drive on like four hours of sleep… it is not… we made it in 13… we're just getting a late start is all."

Sam snorted and sipped his coffee. "You're so whipped."

"I'll whip your ass. Shut up." Dean barked at him and returned his half-conscious attention back to the phone. "So yeah… We could probably be back in the middle of the night but… just a little… it's not a big deal… so I sprained my wrist, it'll heal."

Shaking his head, he set his coffee down and settled in to watch his brother talk to his wife on the phone. He could keep saying it… didn't make it any less weird.

"Look, go do something. I'm on the phone." The older Winchester had had enough teasing. His brother only laughed. "Gotten laid, lately, Sammy? Cause I have."

"Jerk."

"Bitch." Dean cleared his throat and sat up with the phone. "So… I'm gonna kick his ass and we'll be on the road." Lowering his voice, he ducked his head into the phone a bit. "How are you feeling? … Yeah, okay, I'll let up." He cleared his throat. "Yeah, me too."

Sam's eyebrows shot up as his brother closed his phone and sat up to sip the coffee by the bedside. "Are you looking to never get laid again?"

"What?"

"Never mind." He shook his head at his brother.

"You know… it's rude to listen in on someone else's phone conversations."

"It's rude not… never mind." Sam rose to grab his things. "You drive first leg."

Monday evening…  
(September 19, 2010)

Liz walked in after her shift and shook her head. They had not been home when she went in to work but there they were. Sam's long limbs were sprawled all over the extra bed. She tossed a blanket over him before slipping out of her shoes. Dean had taken over her body pillow. One of his eyes opened to watch her before slipping closed again. "Tired?" He only nodded. "But you got him?" A nod and a smile. "Does that mean you're a bigger bad ass than the infamous J.W. Hardin?" A broad smile. "Okay. You're sleepy. I'm going to make my dinner. If you're hungry, you make it to the table."

Dean got up and made it to the table while she was still putting together something that smelled good. "There was a freaky ass fence around his grave. Not a big deal but digging him up without destroying it was a trick."

"Is that how you sprained your wrist?"

"Yeah… Had to dodge his bullets. Ghost bullets still kill. Then once we had done the deed, we had to put everything back before someone showed up. The graveyard was smack in the middle of town and we're pretty lucky that no one called the cops on our smoke." Dean took the plate when she handed it to him but only ate about half of it. He was still asleep, really. He glanced back at Sam, asleep on the extra bed. He had always felt bad that Sam couldn't really stay there with him but… the cottage was too small for three adults and when the baby came it was going to be tight enough. Good thing that Sam was a good housekeeper so Bobby let him stick around while he was working at the library.

"You have any proof that you did it?" Liz asked while helping herself to seconds.

"I carved my initials on his marker." Dean grinned. "Any other hunter comes around trying to pin Hardin for something else will know that I was there."

"Sam doesn't get credit for anything?"

"Sam's not in it for the acclaim. I'll take it all." He pushed his plate away with his good hand and laid the hurt one next to it to examine the swelling. "Mind helping me wrap this?"

"Yeah, I'll do it. Why didn't Sam do it?"

"He was punishing me." Dean shrugged. "And I kind of didn't let him do it."

"Of course you didn't. You were being macho and bragging on how well you fought off Hardin while Sam…"

"Was keeping look out and getting knocked down every five minutes."

"Right."

* * *

TBC 


	54. Chapter 53

Part 53 – a month later…  
(October 28, 2010)

Liz set down the grocery bag and glared. "Could you help me?" Dean lifted his head from where he'd settled in front of the TV with a beer. "Dean, come on."

"Do you know how many carburetors I took apart today?"

"Do you know how many of your son's internal organs I made today?"

"Okay. You win." Dean groaned as he rose to fetch the remainder of the bags from the car.

"Why do I have to twist your arm to get you to help me?" She put away all the perishables first.

"You're the one who yelled at me for treating you like glass."

"I'm carrying your child, front and center," she pointed to her enormous belly, "aided only by my uterus and some skin; show some appreciation."

"When I try, you put me off."

"Sex is not appreciation."

"I wouldn't know because I'm not getting any."

"I'm serious, Dean. All you do anymore is watch TV."

"Hey… I work damn hard, harder than I have in my whole life… I have to wind down."

"Fine." Liz dropped the last of the cans into the cabinet. She rubbed at her lower back. "You get to drink to unwind… I just get to sit." She winced as her belly tightened. Suddenly, he was right behind her, guiding her to a chair. He didn't say anything after that… just finished putting away the groceries. The silence was tight as they waited for a recurrence of the cramp. Liz focused on breathing deep. When she felt she was okay, she lifted a swollen hand, which Dean took and guided her to the bed, ready with her pillows to rest.

"Maybe you shouldn't work anymore." He dropped back onto his chair, eyes focused on the TV, beer clenched in his hand.

"Three months to go." She breathed out. "So far, so good."

Dean nodded, his eyes bare slits as he listened to her breathing even out. Setting down his beer, he escaped out the door and down the street to the bar. Slipping into a spot near the pool table, he waited until an unfamiliar hunter called him out for a game. The game was quick. Dean lost. He ordered another beer, then lost again. He ordered a third and then cleaned up. That resulted in being thrown against a wall and a pool cue broken across his back.

Focusing, Dean gave as good as he got until he felt nothing but the burn in his arms and legs. He managed to avoid the knife pulled on him, managed to knock down the gun. Rolling with all punches thrown, Dean made sure the other guy was going to look worse for wear. He didn't know when exactly Sam joined the fight but it was definitely Sam who put an end to it.

Sam shoved his brother out the door and shoved harder when Dean grabbed a beer on his way out. Marty picked up the other hunter and gave Sam a look. Sam only nodded before heading out to find his brother. The brothers came to a stop in front of the hotel where Dean leaned against a pike and stared up at the night sky. "You want to tell me what that was all about?"

"Not really."

"You could have gotten yourself killed over a game of pool." Sam ran a hand through his hair and looked to his older brother. The beard hid a lot but not the eyes. "Dean."

Dean pulled on his beer as his muscles cooled from their unexpected workout. "It's just… I'm a Hunter. I kill things… but look at Liz. She's got a life inside her… and I helped create that life. It's just surreal, you know?"

"I get that it's weird." What any of that had to do with what he'd just done to a fellow hunter was beyond him but Sam had to keep his brother talking.

"I want this to work, Sam. I do… but she's freaking me out and I don't know what to do."

"Well, what's going on?"

"She gets mad at me for the little stuff and then I panic cause she's not supposed to get mad but when I… back off, she gets pissed." Dean shook his head. "She's waiting for me to say something that I can't say. I can't say that I'll stay but I can't stay and be that guy… and I can't…"

"I can see that you're unhappy about it. I can tell that you're head over heels for Liz but the thing about women is that they like to hear it."

"I don't do all that mushy crap."

"If you want to keep her, you'll learn."

"Keep her…" Dean repeated. "I can't say it, Sam. Everything that I love gets taken away from me… I can't let her get taken away."

"Well, I'm still here and Liz is still here and… we got a bunch of people rooting for us… so… no giving up."

The following month…  
(November 25, 2010)

Dean cursed as the heat of the pan seeped through the pot holders. He only barely got the damned thing on the table before he had to let go. Liz stared at him. "You okay?"

"Fine."

"Check the pies in the other oven." She instructed.

He pulled open the door and backed up as a wave of heat hit his face. "What am I checking?"

"To see if they're done." Liz stretched but she couldn't see from her seat.

"I got this." Sam announced as he walked into the room with two large sacks in his arms. He took the potholders from Dean and pulled the rack out. "Crusts are golden brown but the middles are a little jiggly."

"Five more minutes?" Liz asked.

"Ten?" Sam slid the rack back into the oven. He grabbed a pan and began loading rolls into it for a quick warm up in the oven. "You gonna carve that bird or stare at it?"

"What?" Dean's head snapped up.

"The turkey, Dean. You need to carve it up so that everyone can just serve themselves." Liz explained. "You okay? I know I didn't sleep but…"

"I'm good." Dean selected his knife carefully.

"Sam, can you get the casseroles out onto the bar?" Liz asked, wincing at a twinge in her back. "I feel like a whale."

"Nonsense." Sam smiled at her. "Caved to the maternity wear?"

"Yeah, there's just no more fighting it. Muumuus until he's born." Liz rubbed her belly, then regretted it as the baby decided nap time was over and it was time to play. "I may have internal injuries from him kicking all the time."

"I'm here!" Betty Lou rushed in with a foil covered Pyrex dish in each hand. "Kyle's got the yams." She grabbed utensils and tossed them onto a foil covered dish, then ran out to the bar where the food was accumulating quickly.

Dean filled the platter with slices of turkey meat and just when he thought his kitchen duties were done, he was given the task of washing grapes and pulling them off their stems. He had a laugh listening to Liz instruct Sam on how to properly drain various fruits from their cans. "I'm married to upper-management."

"I heard that." Liz tossed over her shoulder as she stole a few marshmallows from the bag before instructing Sam to throw those into the bowl as well.

"Dude, you okay?" Sam frowned at his older brother. He knew that Dean would shrug him off but he looked bad.

"Didn't sleep." Dean picked up the towel full of grapes and handed them over. Then he picked up the plate of turkey. "Let's get this thing started."

--

Sam cornered his brother as he was getting dessert. "Hey man… what's going on?"

"Nothing."

"You look like crap."

"Didn't sleep."

"Why?"

Dean glanced over his shoulder to make sure Liz was occupied. "Look, Liz was sick all night. She doesn't want me to know about it but I know about it."

"Okay…"

"She's okay now but she was puking up her guts all night. I got up the first time and she made me go back to bed… like I was gonna sleep to her ralphing all night. She didn't want me to bother her, so I didn't."

"But she's okay."

"Yeah but we're both dog tired and I want to eat some pie. So, can it." Dean took his pie to Marty's table and took a long pull off his beer.

Sam frowned at his brother and carried his own pie to Liz's table. "You okay?"

"What?" Liz looked up from her plate, cranberry sauce smeared over everything.

"Dean says you were sick all night."

She only hesitated for a second before spearing a slice of turkey and making sure there was gravy on every inch of it. "I'm okay now."

"So… why is he pissed?"

"He's not mad."

"Why are you mad?"

"I'm not mad."

"Is this one of those married things?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Liz shook her head.

"You know… I know that I keep switching sides on this whole issue but normally, you guys are right on top of one another… normally, it creeps me out… today… you guys not doing that… creeps me out more."

"It's Thanksgiving. We're not gonna fight on Thanksgiving. It's… kind of our anniversary." Liz frowned and then scowled. "So now, I am mad. Thanks, Sam."

"Okay." Sam rose from the table and scratched at his neck while passing Dean. "You're in the doghouse." He coughed as he moved on.

"What'd I do?" Dean sat up and looked at Liz, who was stabbing her plate viciously. "What'd I do?"

"I know that look." Marty snorted. "Reserved for major fuck ups. Forgotten birthdays or falling in the toilet."

"I learned my lesson on the toilet thing…" Dean thought about it as he chewed on some pie crust. "What'd I forget?" He cursed under his breath. "I hate it when she does this. I'm not a mind reader."

--

Liz pulled her jacket tight and waddled her way down the road. Frost decorated the sides of the road but she kept her pace slow and steady. She hunched her shoulders and focused her gaze on the road when she heard the quicker, yet steady, steps of someone casually catching up to her. She stopped when he pulled even with her. "You're just going to follow me around forever?"

"Why are you mad? Did I not whip the potatoes for precisely the right amount of time or is it my lack of pie knowledge?"

"Shut up. It's not about potatoes or pie." She glared at him.

"Then what is it?"

"Do you know what today is?"

"Thanksgiving."

"No… do you know what Thanksgiving is?" She stared at him. "For us."

Dean took a minute and then realized where they were standing. They were about a mile from the spot where they had come together the year before… on Thanksgiving evening. One frickin' year. "I forgot. I'm lucky if I know what day of the week it is."

"Yeah, I didn't remember either." She admitted. "I… I don't know what to do. Okay? We're not… I don't know."

"Look, you've got some kind of road map in your head about where we're supposed to be headed and what the landscape should look like along the way. I don't know what any of that looks like or what it's supposed to be. I don't know how to be whatever it is that your brain tells you that I should be. I can only be who I am." Dean felt the anger rising to his face. "I'm so sick and tired of being shit on because… I don't know the fucking difference."

"I don't—"

"Let me talk! You're always complaining that I never talk so let me. I work in a car garage. I let morons treat me like shit. I keep my mouth shut about shit that I know will aggravate you. I'm standing still cause I said I would. None of this is me!" he spun away and gripped the guardrail. "I need more space to breathe. I'm not used to any of this. I wasn't made this way. To be the abused mechanic and the doting husband, daddy dearest… I'm just me. Respectable isn't me."

"Well, figure it out." Liz sniffed and began the walk back to the cottage.

* * *

TBC 


	55. Chapter 54

Part 54 – a week later…  
(December 1, 2010)

Sam dished up two bowls of stew. Anything to warm his bones from the walk home in the freezing cold. Bobby sat down across from him and took a spoon to his own bowl. They both winced when the door slammed outside. The shouts followed. It didn't matter what they said. It wasn't about the words. Sam set down his spoon and clasped his hands over his bowl. "You think it's gonna last?"

"Usually over in about ten minutes." Bobby shrugged and spooned another mouthful of stew into his mouth.

"Not the fight… them." Sam lifted his shoulders and tilted his head toward the window. "The more time they spend together, the more this happens and… it's killing them both."

"It's a phase. The honeymoon is over and the marriage is yet to truly begin." Bobby sipped his beer and stared off into space. "Doesn't matter how many times you marry… there are always stages of settling in."

"They don't know what they're doing."

"What gave that away, Sherlock?" Bobby snorted as he got up to help himself to another helping. "This is what happens when you're young and stupid. There they are. Young and Stupid, themselves."

Sam felt helpless as he watched Dean gesture emphatically with his arms where he stood three yards from his front door. Liz shouted back, gesturing herself, but every time she made to step off the porch, Dean advanced. The movement forced her back into the cottage until finally she'd had enough and slammed the door behind her as she retreated to its warm comfort.

Dean just stood there, arms wrapped around his middle for ten minutes before turning to cross the street to the bar. "Marty's cut him off. He'll be back soon enough."

"I know." Sam nodded and sure enough, Dean stormed back into the salvage yard and kicked an old tire for several minutes. Watched him stand in the space between Bobby's house and the cottage. He was equidistant. He could just as easily have gone to Bobby's to warm up until he was ready to make up with Liz. He could have easily escaped in the Impala to get the beer he clearly wanted. Instead, he sat on the porch and stared up at the darkening sky and endured in the freezing cold.

Finally, Sam had had enough. Taking a mug of coffee, he walked out to his brother. "Here."

"Thanks." Dean took it and sipped carefully.

"You okay?"

"Absolutely." He tried to look casual as he relaxed on the freezing cold stoop. "Don't I look okay?"

"What happened on Thanksgiving, man? Ever since then… you've been fighting like cats and dogs."

"Sammy… we were fighting before that." Dean offered his brother a wan smile. "Do you remember the off-months when we were kids? Dad would take us with him just so he could keep an eye on us?"

"Cause we'd already torn up the hotel rooms or apartments crawling the walls for something to do."

"Right." Dean shook his head as he remembered some of those long winter days.

"He never really did that in the summer." Sam mused.

"In the summer, we had Pastor Jim and he'd let us run all over the place. In the winter, we couldn't go outside…" Dean could see his father's reasoning. "We would have driven Pastor Jim nuts if we'd been there in the winter."

"Dean?"

"Last year, this time? Liz and I were holed up in there and we were doing just fine. It was cold, so we spent a lot of time in bed. I disappeared on you for like… four days."

"So, you were in there the whole time?" Sam jerked his head backward toward the door behind them.

"Yeah." He took a deep breath. "And I felt really crappy when I left her… even though I wasn't sure that the next time I came through that… I feel crappy now."

"Oh yeah?"

"We're fighting about stupid stuff." He snorted and sipped the cooling coffee. "I'm serious… it's really stupid stuff but it's like we can't help it."

"It gets like that when you're learning how to live with someone." Sam admitted. "Jess and I had this really tough period after I moved in with her. Bills and groceries and chores. It was stupid stuff but we got over it."

"I feel like we're running out of time. We have to figure it out before the baby comes because I don't know if we'll fix it if he comes first."

"I guess that makes sense." Sam sighed heavily. "Why do you think you keep fighting?"

"I don't know but I think she's hiding something." The sigh came deep and heavy and right from his soul. They sat like that until the coffee had disappeared from Dean's cup and he'd long stopped feeling the cold.

"You want to ask Bobby if he'll put you up on his couch?"

Dean lifted his eyes to his brother and opened his mouth to answer when the door swung open between them. Liz stood there, her eyes red and her face swollen. "Dean, come inside before you make yourself sick. Sam, you're going to get sick too. You both have to work tomorrow."

Sam rose and watched them disappear behind the door. He wondered which way his brother would have answered.

December 4, 2010

Liz winced as Dean rubbed out a knot in her back. It was nearly two in the afternoon but neither of them had any thoughts of getting out of bed. It was too cold and there was nothing appealing in getting up if there was nothing to get up for. Dean pulled her back flush against his chest and nudged his way into the hollow of her neck. She giggled when his hand slipped up her belly, dragging her shirt with it. She held in a wince when the baby kicked her hard. Then he wouldn't stop. "He's doing maneuvers again."

"Maneuvers, huh." Dean bent over her form to fix his mouth to her belly. "Hey there. It's Saturday. Stand down. Mom is relaxing."

"Maybe he'll listen to you. He never listens to me." She slid her hand along his neck and into his hair. He lingered, scratching her belly with his beard. "Your hair is getting long."

"But you know it's sexy."

"Yes, it is."

He laid his ear against her belly and just listened. Then he heard the telltale rumblings that were not his son's doing. "Hungry?"

"Maybe."

The next half hour was quiet with its shuffling about, showering and cooking. Then Sam walked in with his big, stomping feet. "Good afternoon, Winchesters. I said afternoon cause it's only that for another couple of hours and then it's evening. We all thought you guys had finally killed each other or something."

It was meant as a joke but it put a damper on the day's good feelings. Dean dropped a sloppier than necessary sloppy joe in front of his brother and set the neater version at Liz's spot. He fixed his own while Liz combed out her hair, getting long again. They sat down to eat and ignored Sam's good humor.

"What are you guys going to do tonight?"

"12 has a… Monster Madness thing going on." Dean shrugged as he took a big bite of his sandwich.

"I'm in the middle of a book." Liz didn't bother glaring at Dean but the eye roll didn't escape Sam.

"You guys are such fogies. It's Saturday and you're going to sit inside all day and all night?" Sam pouted.

"It's winter… in South Dakota." Dean popped in a little Fargo while he poured hot chocolate for Liz and coffee for himself. "It's cold and she's very pregnant. Running around out there isn't anyone's idea of fun."

"But…" Sam sank down in his seat and picked at the loose meat falling from his sandwich. "You guys suck."

"Honestly, the only thing on my plate for the day was to seduce my wife and then you popped in… unannounced and now she's pissed off. Thanks." Dean got up to put his plate in the sink. He was glad he could at least make Liz smile, even if she had no intention to cave to his desires. They'd had this discussion. She was uncomfortable and so he wasn't getting any.

Sam averted his eyes and closed his mouth with a click. He picked up his plate and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. "Thanks for lunch. See you guys on Monday."

Liz held in her snicker until after Sam had shut the door behind him. She picked at her plate. She opened her mouth to ask about what he'd said to Sam but she couldn't get the question out. She swallowed down a lump. "How about I make us some popcorn for that Monster Madness thing?"

"Yeah, sure." Dean nodded and rinsed off her plate when she handed it to him. He went about picking up stray items from the floor and tossing them in their general places. Then he grabbed the body pillow off the bed and tossed it onto the low couch in front of their tiny TV. Liz brought the popcorn and the blanket. They took a moment to get comfortable before Dean clicked on the TV with his foot. After about ten minutes of silent munching, Dean reached back to the side table and handed Liz her book. She took it with a smile and a kiss to his neck. A half hour later, the bowl of popcorn was empty, Swamp Thing had taken out an army's worth of bad guys and they were both asleep.

December 6, 2010

Sam felt bad when he unfolded the newspaper print out for his brother. Liz was standing right there but this was what they did. They helped people who didn't know what was in the dark. "It's escalating."

Dean studied the article and filled in what his brother wasn't saying. "It's a woman in white."

"How can you tell?" Liz took the paper to look it over.

"It's the twelfth disappearance on that creek. All men. Half of them divorced." Dean answered before Sam could open his mouth. "I'm guessing some kids were fooling around out there and said they heard a woman singing a lullaby?"

"Yeah." Sam nodded and handed over another article. "11 years old. His friends said he was going to see her."

"La llorona." Liz whispered and handed the paper back. "A favorite ghost story where I'm from."

"It's never been just a story." The elder Winchester looked to his wife but didn't ask the question nor let his face do it for him.

"Suzanne Morris, 32, drowned her ten year old son last year. Said the devil made her do it in her suicide note. The day the divorce papers showed up, she walked into her pool and didn't come back out. The creek was a mile from her house. It's where her husband proposed. He's already married to the 25 year old he'd been having an affair with." Sam cleared his throat at the silence between the two of them. "It's a nine hour drive."

Liz met her husband's gaze and finally nodded. "You call me when you get there and you call me when you've taken care of it. If it's going to take longer than four days, you let me know."

"We'll be here for Christmas." Dean promised. Sam blinked at one then the other. Why did he always have to walk in on something? He gave his brother an apologetic look. Dean only cleared his throat. "Let's go make sure we're stocked up."

"I'm going to sit here for a while." Liz told him.

"I'll wait." He offered.

"I don't think I want to see the research on this one."

December 13, 2010

Dean snorted as he walked in. "Christmas threw up in here."

"Shut up." She swatted him with a pair of socks she was folding. "Get cleaned up. We're going to Betty Lou's parents' house for dinner."

"I just got here."

"And we're going." Liz smiled to herself when he immediately began shucking his dirty flannel and grabbed some of his things from the dresser to take a shower. She frowned when she saw the scratches on his chest. "Dean, what happened?"

"Woman in White. They never play fair." He gestured to the scrapes on his neck as well. "I'll heal."

"Oh." She nodded and fought off a wave of dizziness. "I'm gonna sit."

"You okay?"

"I didn't eat cause we're going to get stuffed." She reached across the table for a Christmas cookie. "I'll be fine. Get dressed." He nodded and disappeared into the bathroom. Liz shut her eyes tight as something flashed across her eyes. _Skin and tongue._ Shaking her head, it cleared but left a dull ache. Pinpoints of pain in her skull. _Nails pulled against skin._ Taking a deep breath, Liz forced it away. After a minute, she knew it was gone.

--

Liz accepted the gift with a gracious smile, then relaxed against Dean as everyone else opened their presents. Dean plucked the bag out of Liz's hands and examined the gift. Not for them, for him. A small blue jumper with John embroidered across the chest. It felt too small. Liz held out the matching shoes. His fingers wouldn't even fit in them.

Dean didn't say much to anyone else at the party. He didn't know these people, save for Stan and Betty Lou. The other guys from the garage weren't there, not that he wanted them there but… the estrogen level was pretty high. He just held the jumper in the flat of his hand. "John. W."

"Not too long now… out of my body." Liz laughed lowly into his chest. "I feel like I'm carrying a watermelon and two cantaloupes."

"Them some melons I like."

"Pervert."

"You really complaining?" He jerked his head to the door. "Let's go."

"Where?"

"Where do you think?"

"We don't want to be rude."

Dean stood and gathered their things into the little bags. "Um, hate to run but… um… we forgot the mistletoe at home."

"Dean!" Liz smacked him. She managed a blush when Betty Lou's aunt nudged her.

"Maybe you take some to go?" Her aunt cleared her throat… pointing to the mistletoe over the doorway.

"This isn't funny." Liz chided him but he was already helping her to her feet.

"Thanks for the… baby clothes." Dean ushered her to where Kyle already had her jacket ready. "And the punch. Yummy."

December 29, 2010

Liz found the note on his pillow. She read it aloud. "We'll be right back. Salt and burn three towns over. Favor for one of Marty's friends."

She laughed to herself and ignored the stiffness in her bones as she tried to get comfortable again. She had the next month off. Forbidden by absolutely everyone to work or lift anything heavier than a Big Mac. She felt something crinkle under her pillow. She pulled out a slip of paper. "Get up and eat something, will ya?"

--

Sam pulled the car into the drive-in restaurant. He rattled off their order as he shuffled through newspaper clippings beside him. Dean had clipped a huge amount on the ride over and none of them were for the job at hand. "Where are these from?"

"Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire and Georgia."

"How did you get all these?"

"Had Marty tell a few guys what to look out for… these are what came up." Dean picked up one that had hit close to home. Fire killed the parents of a pair of kids. "This could have been us."

"What's going to happen to them?"

"The state if there's no other family alive." He set it down. He was damn lucky to have had his dad. "We gotta get this demon, Sam."

"I know."

"Been looking up the signs that Dad followed… the ones that lead us to Rosie."

"Rosie?"

"Rosie. Baby Rosie… almost became a freak like you." He reminded his brother. "Almost lost her mother like us."

"Right… Rosie." Sam nodded to himself. "So… is this stuff happening again?"

"Hard to tell. From what I can figure… If we catch on pretty quick… we'll still only have a week to get there and figure out who and where and stop it from happening again." He took a deep breath and stared around at the little town they'd landed in. "We need to take care of this first. Then I'll go checking around for this stuff."

--

Liz couldn't stop the vision from playing over and over in her mind. Electricity ran up and down her arms. As the night grew darker, she lit up the room even brighter. Suddenly, she stilled.

Green energy faded and died down. A flick of her hand lit the lamp in the corner. Slowly her body moved to the table. Pen and paper in her hands as the images floated before her eyes.

Her fingers bent quickly. The pen flowed evenly as if in practiced strokes. Page after page of writings, drawings with labels. Silently, she placed the notebook in the nightstand then sat to write a note. Nine sentences. Liz folded the note and slipped it into the back of John's journal. She closed the flap and set it back on Dean's gunny sack by the closet.

She sat down, rubbed her belly, then woke up. Confused and oddly calm, she got ready for bed. She barely made it to the pillow before she fell into a fitful sleep.

--

"Motherfucker!" Dean cursed loudly and dropped his shotgun into his lap. He yanked off his ring and shoved it into his pocket. He barely had time to lift it and shoot before the specter had reappeared. So much easier to shoot without the ring getting in the way. It was too cold and too inconvenient just now. "Sam!"

"I'm still digging!"

"Keep it up. I need more shells."

"Check my jacket!"

--

Liz woke in total darkness, feeling the most alone she had ever felt in her life. Much the empty way she had felt when Max had died the first time. Panicked, she fumbled for her phone and dialed. She held her breath while it rang.

"Babe, I know I'm late checking in but you've got the worst timing. Let me kick some Casper ass and I'll be home tonight." He managed a laugh though the screams and shots that traveled over the line told a tale of high tension.

"But you're okay?"

"So far. I really gotta focus now." Click.

He was okay. He was alive. Still, the panic would not subside. Rising, she decided to eat something to settle her stomach. To let her body in on the clue that everything was really all right. Cleaning up after Dean's morning dash out the door, she waited patiently for leftover stew to reheat on the stove. Flashes of light crossed her vision. Vainly, she tried to blink them away. Eventually, her vision forced her to the ground on her hands and knees. She wailed but she couldn't make them go away as the light turned into visions of something she never wanted to see.

_The moans. Grunts as skin slid against skin. The slap of hips meeting hips._

"Stop it." Liz gripped her head but there was no pain, save for the feeling of her soul hemorrhaging. "Stop."

_Her eyes were brown but darker. Black in the dark, but hazel in the light. Brown under the light of the lamp. Her dark hair splayed on the pillow._

She sobbed as she fought against them. Then she gave up and just let them played before her eyes. She watched it all.

--

Dean walked into the cottage to find Liz staring off into space while something bubbled on the stove. It smelled overcooked. "I think it's done."

When she didn't respond, he removed the stew-like substance off the burner. He watched her bite her lip and look to him with tear-filled eyes. "I can't do this anymore."

"Liz?"

"I can't. I need you to leave and stay gone."

"Pardon me?" He blinked at her, panic rising in his throat. "What's all this about?"

"I can't be with you. If you and I are not in love and this arrangement is not working... We have to stop it now." She wouldn't meet his eyes.

"I don't understand. When did you decide this? We just talked three hours ago and you didn't say anything about breaking up."

"When you're married, it's called a divorce." She finally met his eyes. "I don't think we should hold each other back anymore."

That was it. That look. Dean nodded and picked up his bag. He didn't look back until he got to the door. He wanted to say something, anything but he couldn't and still have the strength to leave. He set his jaw and left. Tossing his bag into the Impala, he thought about going to Bobby's but he didn't want to hear about how he'd fucked things up. He'd go to Marty's but there was too much there. Too many people who had known it wasn't going to work and too many people who would be asking questions. Climbing into the Impala, he just needed to get out of Valor Springs. He didn't even bother to get Sam, he needed to be by himself.

--

Twenty minutes after she'd heard the roar of the Impala leave the salvage yard, they had returned. She didn't have the strength to fight them. So she let them play until they stopped. Let them tear her heart to shreds. Seeing his smile aimed at someone that wasn't her. Watching his mouth do things to that woman that he hadn't done with her in a long time. Watching that look on his face while he was with someone else. Liz prayed that once they stopped, they would never cross her mind's eye again.

--

Rutherford. The closest thing to civilization. Dean had let the road calm him some. Still, he was wound tight. Dropping onto a stool in a random bar, he focused on nothing but the burn of alcohol. She ordered her drink as she took her seat. It wasn't until she'd had a sip or two that she noticed him. He felt her appraising eyes drift from his face to his body and down to his greasy fingers curled around his glass. "You're not from here."

"Valor Springs." Dean bit out but didn't turn his head.

"They don't have a bar in Valor Springs?"

"Sure, they do but I don't get to go in." He looked up and wished he hadn't. She was gorgeous. All brown eyes and dark hair and full lips.

"Serena." She held her hand out to him.

"Dean."

"You're a mechanic." She tilted his hand up to expose the dirty fingernails and the faint outline of a wedding ring.

"Among other things." Her smile was too relaxed. He had to look away. "I'll bet you're a nurse or something."

"Actually, yeah… for now." She sipped her drink. "I'm paying my way through medical school."

"College girl, huh."

"What? I can't talk to you because I went to college?"

"Talk away. I'm just having a drink."

So she kept talking. He listened with limited commentary. He didn't move her hand when it landed on his knee. And he didn't stop her hand from sliding up his thigh. He was tempted to see how far she would take it. He was so sexually frustrated that he thought he might pop. Her hand slid to the inside of his thigh as her lips brushed against his ear, whispering that her place was not that far.

Dean considered her words as he finished his drink. If he followed her, he knew what would happen. That involved writhing and panting and the bliss of orgasm with a perfect stranger… something he hadn't done in a couple of years. If he refused, she'd leave him there and he'd probably have another beer and start a brawl on his way out. Her hand wrapped around his bicep and Dean found himself following her out to the parking lot.

* * *

TBC 


	56. Chapter 55

Part 55 – Later that night…  
(December 30, 2010)

Dean crept into the cottage and bent to yank off his boots. It had been a close one. He'd nearly gone into a ditch. He'd had to dig through the snow to make sure he'd have traction when he backed out onto the road. He'd slipped more than once getting salt into the snow to melt it down enough to provide the traction. He quickly shed his wet clothing and put on a pair of dry boxer briefs. He slid into bed behind Liz. She shifted and shivered at the cold of his body. "Dean, you're freezing."

"Warm me up." He buried his face in her hair. God, she smelled good.

She was quiet for a long while. "Did you fuck her?"

"Fuck who?"

"The girl from my dream."

"I didn't fuck anyone."

"You were going to. I saw it… I couldn't unsee it." She sniffed. "I was afraid if I… if we fought that you would. And we can't ever stop fighting." She shifted onto her back, forcing him to face her. "I saw it."

"I thought about it. I was going to but I…" He averted his eyes as he relayed the tale. "I was following her to her place. There was ice on the road. The car spun. I nearly slid into a ravine… when I stopped… when the world stopped… she wasn't even in my mind… all I kept thinking was…"

"What?"

"I needed to get back to you." He pressed his lips to her forehead. "You take me over and I don't know what to do with it."

"Dean… I don't know how to love a hunter but I'm trying so hard. I'm scared for us, for the baby."

He leaned over her and placed a hand on her swollen belly. Promptly, he felt little Johnny's swift kicks. "I don't want to screw this up, Liz. I'm trying but there are some things that I don't know how to do."

"Okay."

"You have to trust me. You have to stop holding me up to him."

"I don't."

"You do. You look at me and you expect more. You expect him." He felt the wet slip onto his eyelashes. "Just… don't ask me to leave. Ask me whatever you have to but don't ask me to leave."

The words were thick in her throat but she forced them out. "When you hunted that Lady in White… why did it target you?" She saw the bewilderment in his eyes. "It didn't go after Sam, it attacked you. Why?"

"Who told you?"

"Marty."

"Liz. Lady in White… she goes after unfaithful men. Doesn't matter when they were unfaithful, just that they were. I swear to you that as long as we've been doing this… it's only been you." He laid his head against her shoulder. "I'll bunk with Sam. I'll bum a bed from Marty… just don't make me leave you." He took a deep shuddering breath. "There's not a whole lot holding me together these days… If you… I can't… I need you to have me here."

Four Days later…  
(January 3, 2011)

Dean leaned on the case as he slid his hand into the glove. Gently, he stroked his son's arm. "Hey there, kiddo. I'm your Dad." Why was his mouth so dry all of a sudden? "Don't worry. Dr. Meyer knows all the cool docs with the drugs. They're gonna get you out of there soon.

"Listen. You gotta get better. Your mom hasn't seen you yet. Your uncle is wearing a hole in the floor with all his pacing… and your grandparents are scaring me… and as for me… I'm kind of missing out on the whole first time dad routine. I'm supposed to hold you and show you the world. I guess we can do some of that now.

"Your name is John Winchester. I named you after my dad. I'll bore you your whole life with stories about him. I'll tell you what I remember about my mom. I give your uncle hell about believing in angels but I'll let it slide for you. My mom always used to tell me that angels watched over me while I slept and I hope to God that they do. We need all the help and hope we can get, bud."

Dean felt the weak grip around his little finger and leaned his head on the case. "I love your mom, kiddo. I do but we got into a fight the other day. Kind of like the last few months but… I'm a little afraid that I made you show up too early. The doc says the risk is minimal but he still said the word 'risk' and Winchesters never get the easy road. Maybe I shouldn't have married her. As an Evans you might have had a better shot. I'd still be proud to call you my son but…"

The group of nurses began to grow behind the desk as they stopped to listen to a beautiful man speak to his sick son. He was the only baby in the NICU. Baxter didn't see many complications to require full staffing there.

"So you gotta get strong for me. We gotta gang up on your mom. I'll teach you to burp and scratch. It'll drive her nuts. Some day maybe you could come on a hunt with your uncle and me. I got a rifle with your name on it… literally. It's a Winchester that my dad got from a good friend. Name's engraved right on it." He sniffed and tried to smile but it wavered away. He steeled himself behind closed lids for a second. He opened them to peer at his son's closed eyes. His throat was tight but he forced the words out. "I want to tell you to get better because the world is a bright and wonderful place but I won't start lying to you so young with the odds stacked against you the way they are. My dad wouldn't do it to me and I won't do it to you, ever.

"There are things in his world that scared even your grandpa and I'll tell you, he was one bad ass son of a bitch. I've seen things that give tougher men nightmares. I would totally not blame you if you chose not to pass 'Go' or collect 200. My mom could take care of you in whatever passes for heaven these days… but I promise you that if you choose to live… that all of the things in this world that hate, that hide in the dark or any of the other nightmare things will not touch a hair on your head. They will all have to go through me and through your mom cause she's one tough chick. She has to be. She carried you for nearly nine months and she puts up with me… and who even knows why she would do that… And she takes care of your Uncle Sam, too." The small hand shifted its grip on his finger and Dean let a tight smile settle on his face. "Yeah, I think that's funny too. Uncle Sam."

"I'll tell you what though. I hate hospitals. I've been in and out of them all my life… but this one is pretty nice. Dr. Meyer is around and she'll take care of you." Dean lifted his head and immediately a scurry of activity caught his attention. He turned in time to see several women grab for folders and charts to look busy. "Well, marriage hasn't changed my sex appeal. I wasn't even trying… I'll teach you how to do that someday, too."

John's eyes opened a little. Dean peered into the box for a better look. "That's right, buddy. Try for your old man." He gently squeezed the little fingers in encouragement. The heavy lids opened wider, he took a deep breath. His tiny chest heaved with the action. As he deflated, his eyes fell closed. He gave a little shudder and shifted his head. Dean set his jaw against a tremor. "Good job, kid. Keep trying. I'll wait."

When Dean ran his hand over his face, it was wet. Dr. Meyer appeared out of nowhere and picked up the chart. Her question was silent before she began recording vital stats. "Just giving him some words of encouragement… He opened his eyes."

"Oh?" She seemed a little too surprised for Dean's liking.

"Just a little. His eyes are green." He forced a smile that turned natural as he realized his son had his eyes.

"All Winchester, huh."

"Hoping he inherits his mother's fortitude."

"He's doing fine, Dean. Keep talking to him. I think it's helping. When Liz comes around, we'll bring her down here."

"Hey, doc… think I could let Sam in here? I don't want to leave him alone… you know…" Dean shook his head.

"It's okay, Dean. Just talk to the head nurse and we'll get Sam a bracelet." She nodded for him to go. "You go and I'll stay. I promise."

He moved on automatic. Filling out the request and permissions forms. Then Sam got his own NICU bracelet to relieve Dr. Meyer from her post. Dean wandered into the bathroom and used soap, water and his pocket knife to clean up his face. It wasn't exactly a clean shave but it would have to do. He'd get his hair cut later. When he finally sat himself down beside Liz's bed, he felt a little more peaceful. She was still asleep but he didn't want to wake her up. She'd just squeezed a human being out of her body, she deserved to rest.

He never even realized when he'd started to doze until he felt a hand sliding up and down his badly shorn cheek. "Handsome… I knew you had a face under there."

"How are you feeling?" He rubbed his eyes open and took her hand.

"Like I just had a bowling ball removed." She laughed humorlessly. "Do I look like crap?"

"I'd say you look amazingly well for someone who yelled and screamed the way you did. Not that I blame you. He's on the small side but considering what you got to work with… a challenge."

"They took him, huh." She sniffed and rubbed at the tears slipping from her eyes.

"Yeah. He's in the ICU. They gave you those drugs and they gave some more to him. He was awake for a little bit. You want to go see him?"

"Yeah." She nodded and groaned when she tried to sit up.

"Yeah, I'll call the nurse first." He reached over her to hit the button.

"You had better not laugh at me. That was hard work."

"I believe you." Dean looked up when the nurse entered and silently cursed and hoped that she wouldn't recognize him. He knew his luck had run out when he saw Liz's face turn to stone.

"Mrs. Winchester, you're awake." She pulled the chart and flicked her eyes over it. "We'll just check some of your vitals and see about getting you in to see your son." She smiled brightly at them and removed the stethoscope from around her neck. "I don't think you have anything to worry about. Dr. Karlson and Dr. Meyer are very good and you're very lucky to have both working with your son."

"Dr. Meyer is a personal friend." Liz smiled wanly, flicking her gaze to her husband. Then she gripped his hand. "He's not alone, is he? If you're here?"

"No, I left Sam with him. We all get these nifty little bracelets." He held up his wrist and then plucked at hers on her wrist.

"Just to ensure that no one makes off with the babies." The nurse smiled at them, then frowned a bit when her eyes landed on Mr. Winchester. She opened her mouth to say something but thought better of it. "It's not a common thing in these parts but it's state mandate. Um… I'm Serena, by the way. I'll be working this floor all week."

Great, Liz thought as she shifted her eyes to her guilty-looking husband. She didn't have time for this. She wanted to see her son. She looked to him. "Did you talk to the doctor?"

"It's gonna be okay." Dean assured her.

"The doctor is on his way." Serena told them. "He wanted to talk to you before you go down there." She frowned at the sleeve she'd slipped around Liz's arm. "Blood pressure is still a little high but hoping that's just parental worry."

"Among other things." Liz sighed as she fixed her gaze on Dean's shirt.

--

"I got her." Dean moved between Serena and Liz. He lifted her off the bed and set her in the wheelchair. He let her clasp his hand over her shoulder as he guided the chair after Serena to the NICU. No jostling for a new mother. He let Serena explain to Liz what they would see when they got to the room. He felt her squeeze his hand and stopped the procession. "Liz, you can do this."

"Okay." She nodded shakily and allowed herself to be wheeled into the next room, where her bracelet was scanned and Sam was waiting to exit. His jaw dropped when the nurse stepped in behind them. Dean held back a snicker and lightly tugged on Liz's hair. An idea had struck that could score him points with more than one person. "Sammy, close your mouth. You'll catch flies." Embarrassed, Sam looked away but his brother wouldn't shut up. "This is my younger, single, brother Sam. Maybe you could take him for some coffee while my wife meets our son?"

Serena bit her lip against an obvious smile and against a comment but held the door for Sam. "I'll show you the coffee pot that's not lethal."

Liz squeezed his hand and nuzzled it with her cheek. Diversion. A good tactic. "I'm ready."

"Okay." Dean pushed the chair into the room. "She was right. There are tubes running all over the place and from areas you don't think there should be."

"Okay," she breathed. "Okay. I'm ready." She let him push the chair to the incubator. Her eyes widened when she finally saw him. "I thought his lungs were okay. That they were sure that they got him mature enough."

Dean lifted her hand to the glove hole. "They just want to make sure he doesn't develop an infection."

"I don't like the thought of him in a box. How does he know I'm here?"

"You're stalling. Touch him, Liz." Dean coaxed her hand closer to the glove hole. "They said he's been doing better since I came in. I've been talking to him and touching him. He knows that someone's here, I promise you that."

Liz slipped her hand into the glove. She stroked her son's arm and lightly touched his cheek around the oxygen tube. "Hi baby. I'm your mommy." She cast Dean a look. "I feel stupid. How did you do this?"

"I just started talking… and then I couldn't stop."

"What if he has to stay here, Dean?" Liz could feel the panic creeping in.

"Sh." Dean took a seat so he could see them both. "Liz, Johnny and I already had a talk. He's free to move on if he chooses but if he stays, I promised he'd get to know his mother." He offered her a painful smile. "I turned into a poet, a crappy one but I was telling him all about you. So… just talk to him."

"Johnny, huh." Liz managed a weak smile. "Hey Johnny." She forced a smile, a pretty big one when his little head moved. "You and Daddy have been talking, huh? You'll have to teach me how to get him to do that." Her smile warmed up when she felt Dean's hands on her shoulders in a firm squeeze. "I'll bet he's been filling your head with all kinds of crap. So, um, let me lay down the rules. There will be no weapons training before you can ride a bike. There will be no school night hunting… no matter how badass the monster… and if you ever run off on me, my heart will break." She choked back a sob.

"I was telling Johnny about the time his grandpa exorcised a demon while changing a diaper in the next room."

"He did not." She rolled her eyes and wiped at her face with her free hand.

"Did so."

"I have an in that says that's an exaggeration." She leaned into him as she slowly began to count his appendages with her gloved hand. "Ten fingers… ten toes."

"There's no tail. I asked."

"Shut up." She nudged him with her shoulder. She continued to gently lift limbs.

"What are you looking for?"

"A birthmark."

"No triple sixes. I asked."

"Is everything about our son a joke to you?" She lifted her gaze to him to find he was laughing at her already but that his eyes weren't quite filled with the same mirth as his face. She let go of John's hand to face him fully. "Smooth moves back there. You better hope they fall in love and your meeting either never comes to light or becomes a family joke."

"How long are you going to hold that over my head?"

"For as long as I have to." She turned back to their son but rested her other hand on Dean's thigh. "I wish I could hold him. He doesn't feel real, yet."

"Maybe he feels the same way." He slid closer and slid his hand into the other glove. "He's got a decent shot. Sam did the geek boy thing and even though there's risk, there's chance."

"I need to call my parents." She sighed but didn't tear her eyes off her boy. Tears continued to well in her eyes but she didn't bother to wipe them away.

"They're here but somewhere that's not right on top of me." He admitted. "I called them while you were in labor."

"So, we just wait now, huh."

"Yeah… I never liked stake outs."

* * *

TBC 


	57. Chapter 56

Part 56 – the following week  
(January 9, 2011)

Dean took a breath before he lifted the baby into his arms. He was still so small. "So, we finally meet face-to-face." John did nothing but dig his nose closer to Dean's chest. He fought the smile just long enough to make a statement. "This is how it's gonna work, buddy. You're gonna stay here another week and gain weight. That's it. That's your job. Mom's making you up a bottle of the good stuff. No more of that sugar-water hospital crap. Even the bottles here are crap."

"You're just mad you're losing weight because you refuse to eat here." Liz winced as she removed the pump from her breast.

"I can stand to lose the weight. We pigged out for the last few months cause your mom is an awesome cook." His eyes fell on the tray nearby with its spork and Styrofoam plate. "If the milk tastes crappy it's because your mother is actually eating the crappy hospital food."

"Dean." She rolled her eyes then fixed her blouse. "Hand him over. I want to feed him myself." He moved to where she was sitting. He could feel her hands shaking and her breath quivering but she settled the baby against her chest and inserted the fancy contoured-nippled bottle into his mouth. At first, John wouldn't take it but some milk leaked out of the nipple; then he accepted it and sucked eagerly. Dean let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Liz let out a little laugh, awe in her voice. "I'm holding him. And he's eating."

"They said he's doing really well." He cleared his throat against a lump.

"When the doctor explained all the risks and then I saw him in that thing… I just… thought all the worst things that could possibly happen would."

"I know."

"I just felt like we weren't going to get here in time and he'd be born in the Impala in the middle of nowhere and we wouldn't get help fast enough."

"Liz, stop." Dean ordered but shut his eyes as he leaned his head against hers. "He's okay now. They just want to make sure he'll gain some weight before he leaves."

"It's just… I panicked. I'm gonna be one of those moms who panic over every little thing."

"Hey, you know… this wasn't a little thing. There was risk… but he's getting stronger and he'll be okay."

She met his eyes. "How are you so together?"

"He lives. I don't fall apart unless somebody dies… and sometimes not even then." He managed a smirk.

"I told you they were in here." Nancy swatted her husband as she entered the hospital room. She stopped short in front of them. "He's so small."

"The doctor said he was lucky. The last three weeks would have just fattened him up." Dean managed a normal tone but he'd been scared just like everyone else. Right up until Serena had set them up in a private room after John had been removed from the box and relieved of the oxygen mask; precautions that he no longer needed. "So, we're working on that now."

"You're not breastfeeding?" Nancy pulled a chair over to the couch that Liz and Dean sat on.

"Mom." Liz nodded to the breast pump. "They said he might not take since he's been on hospital formula but if we keep him on a bottle, he'll at least get the nutrients." She could watch him eat all day and feel Dean breathing on her cheek while he watched, too. "It feels real now."

"Yeah." Dean brushed his lips against her temple and shut his eyes for a moment. He was saved from having everyone watch him wipe away the moisture from his eyes by Sam walking in to the room, laughing with Serena. Their hands were conspicuously missing the coffee they had excused themselves to get. "Where's my coffee?"

"You need all the sleep you can get." Sam quipped quickly and gestured to the baby. "Once you get him home…"

"He's right." Nancy started pacing. "Did you baby proof the house? Do you have a crib? Is it warm enough? It's so cold out there. I don't know how you live in this weather."

"Honey." Jeff cleared his throat. "Let them enjoy this moment. It's their first one with him.

"Your dad is awesome." Dean chuckled into his wife's ear.

"I get the panicky trait from her." Liz whispered back.

"You know, he needs a good solid middle name."

"Have anything in mind?"

"Parker. Honor the old man without giving the kid a tongue twister of a name." He reached over to stroke John's face. The kid was already falling asleep. That's all he did and they had to keep an eye on him. Make sure that he'd be okay.

"I think Dad will take it." She leaned back into him, relaxing for the first time in weeks. Then they were blinded by a round of flashes. "What in the—"

"For the box." Sam proclaimed as he pocketed the disposable camera.

"For everyone at home." Nancy tsked her daughter. "They all wanted to be here but Michael had to work and Maria promised to watch the diner for us."

"Diane said that Isabel was having a crib made."

"Yeah, I know." Liz nodded. "She said she knew a dealer who worked with soft woods."

"What's that?" Jeff frowned as he hovered, not sure where to sit or what to be doing.

"So that we could engrave the base with whatever we wanted." Liz turned her head up to see her husband's face. "Right?"

"Sounds great to me." He was already mentally classifying sigils for the best wards to put on the base. "We could build a lip on it."

"Dean, no." Sam shook his head. "You're not going to build a rock salt caddy on the crib. Once he starts crawling around, he'll start eating it."

"What?" Nancy frowned as she tried to keep up with the conversation.

"We'll explain later." Liz waved her off. Serena still hovered in the doorway, exchanging glances with Sam.

"Hey… um…" Marty shifted outside the door. "I can come back."

"Marty!" Liz called out softly. "You came."

"Well, my senior waitress gives birth… I figure I should try to make it." He shuffled into the room with a stuffed bear.

"Mom, Dad… this is Marty—"

"Martin Cabbott." He stepped in and shook hands with them both.

"Jeff Parker, my wife Nancy." Jeff finished the introduction.

"Liz works for me." He shuffled over to hand Dean the bear. "You know… a phone call would work so's I know that you didn't die in labor or nothing. I had to hear it from that Overton girl."

"Oh, Marty, I'm sorry…" Liz almost got up but she had a sleeping bundle in her arms. "There's been a lot going on."

"She didn't call us either. Dean called us after the labor had started." Jeff chided his daughter.

"Enough. I'm sorry. I was a little busy." She pouted.

"Tiny box. Lots of tubes. Baby in peril… for like a day or two." Dean explained shortly.

"This is from Bobby. He got a lead on something and took off." Marty handed over the envelope.

Dean furrowed his brow at it before flipping open the already bulging flap. He nearly choked at the sight of so much cash. "What the hell is this?"

"He's an old softy. You really think he was spending that money you guys were paying in rent?" Marty snorted. "So you don't gotta worry about bills for a while."

Dean looked to Sam and waved the envelope. "Like Dad used to do."

"Guess he's the closest that we have now." Sam nodded to his brother.

"Mom, Dad… Can you give us a moment?" Liz whispered. They nodded and left the room. Sam waited a beat but followed them and pulled the door shut on them all. The three remaining Winchesters sat in silence for a while. She stared at the envelope, her mind turning equations. "How much?" She calculated every cent she'd paid to Bobby for rent. "One year or three and a half?"

"Looks like three..." Dean flipped through it but the bills were not separated by denomination, saying that Bobby had never done more with the money than stuffed it somewhere. Then it hit him. This was all the money that Max and Liz had paid since the summer of '07. He rifled through it and found a note. "'Dean, A late wedding present should be enough to make a down payment somewhere nicer. Bobby.'"

Liz looked down to her son. "Uncle Bobby is a big teddy bear."

Later that week…  
(January 13, 2011)

Nancy glanced around the small cottage. "It's small for a family."

"I'm sure it's temporary." Jeff assured his wife as he carried the bags into the house.

"We don't need too much right now, Mom." Liz winced slightly as she sank onto the bed. She'd been curled up in the backseat for two hours. Dean handed her the baby. "I've been living here quite a while."

"It's fine for a couple but you've got a baby now." Nancy examined the curtains. "Did you make these?"

"I'm aware of that, thanks… and yes. I made the curtains." Liz groaned as she settled herself against the pillows.

"Three of us lived here for a few months. We'll survive a while." Dean tossed his dirty clothes in the general direction of his laundry bag.

"Three of you?" Jeff asked absently as he eyed the TV.

"My dad, my brother and me." He shrugged. "I was about 14, I think. Sammy was 10."

"Where is Sam?" Liz glanced up.

"He's getting a room for your folks."

"I can stay on this extra bed." Nancy announced, then frowned. "Why do you have an extra bed?"

"Kyle… before he moved in with Betty Lou." Liz answered and tried not to let her ire show. "Really, Mom. You don't need to stay with us. We'll be fine."

"This is the smallest shower that I have ever seen in my life… including that trailer we lived in before we got the apartment cleared up." Nancy motioned to her husband.

"I'm quite aware, Mom." She rolled her eyes and sank against the body pillow when Dean shoved it behind her. "Dean… what's that smell?"

"Uh…" He glanced around and followed his nose to the sink. "Dinner from two weeks ago."

"Oh gross."

"I've smelled some nasty… but that's…" He took a deep breath and quickly scooped the dishes and all into the trash can. Face turning red, he tied off the bag and marched it outside.

"Three years, honey?" Nancy frowned at the walls.

"And before that, for two years, I lived in the hotel down the road. This is an improvement." Liz motioned for the bottle in the diaper bag. "He's going to wake up any second and be starving. This kid can eat. I'm really glad I didn't decide to put him on the breast. I'd be in bed all day. I had a day's worth on hand before I could start giving it to him and now, I'm nearly in deficit."

"It means he really is getting better." Nancy took a seat on the bed as she fished out the bottle. "Eager to be fat and happy." She only tilted her head in question when no sooner had she produced the bottle, then John opened his eyes and began rooting his nose into his mother's blouse. "How did you know?"

"Had a vision. Little one." She admitted, quietly. "It's been helping to plan my naps. Dean doesn't really sleep except early morning to noon, anyway… so… I get my nights in." She tested the milk on her wrist. "Could you? Microwave for like ten seconds. That's all it needs. Max always said it was a nuclear reactor in a previous incarnation."

"Okay." She nodded to do as instructed. "How are you and Dean getting along in here?"

"You know… still… ironing out the wrinkles." She bit her lip as she fixed her gaze on her son. "We were friends before we… but we still don't know each other all that well."

"Nancy…" Jeff stumbled out of the bathroom, soaking wet. "I didn't know there was a power-blaster in the showerhead."

Liz tried not to laugh too loudly. "We did some cheating when we moved in."

"Jeff." Nancy sighed and rushed over with the bottle before the baby could cry. "Towels, sweetie?"

"In the cabinet next to the closet back there." Liz pointed with her little finger as she aimed the bottle for her son's mouth. "There should be plenty."

Dean took in the sights as he walked back in. "The shower attacked?"

"How about you point us in the direction of the market?" Nancy gestured to the refrigerator full of spoiling food. "Dean, could you?"

"Um…" He really wasn't sure what she was asking. When he was in high school, a mother of someone he was sleeping with hadn't ever caused him a moment's unease. He was nearly 32 years old. Some guys his age had two or three mothers-in-law.

"She's not asking you to take her." Liz snorted softly. "Or for your car. Just tell her how to get there." She sighed and shook her head. "You and that car… I'd be worried if…"

"Shut up." Dean glared at her. "I can help with the shopping."

"I need you to clean out that toxic waste bin." Nancy shook her head. "Jeff, check the windows. I think I feel a draft in here."

"Hey!" Kyle burst in. "I saw you guys pull in but I was elbow deep in an engine."

"Hey, Kyle." Liz greeted him with a smile.

"Aw… he's cute and guess what. Two days ago I had to find a place to stow that box from Isabel." He bent over the bed to examine the sleepy-eyed baby. "So, baldy, welcome to the world. I'll be your spiritual guide and general uncle type."

"Kyle, honey." Nancy hugged him. "You look… like someone is treating you well."

"Yeah." He grinned. "I'll bring Betty by later. Dean, bud, let's go get the crib."

"Yeah." Dean nodded. There were too many people in the room and he needed to get out.

"Mom, could you bring me back some hot chocolate?" Liz begged from her bed. "Oh and some coffee for Dean."

"See, there… that's why I keep her around." Dean pointed as he left the cottage with Kyle. "She always knows what I need."

"Go get the crib, already. I want to see it."

"Honey, the store?" Nancy grabbed her daughter's attention.

"Mom, you can't miss it. Pull out the drive, turn right… drive six blocks, turn right and it's on the left." Liz instructed but motioned to her mother. "Really though, wait until the guys get the crib in here and I'll go with you."

"Honey, I can do this. You relax and when he gets back to sleep, you can shower and know that the men will be around to watch him. Believe me, some respite now, makes all the difference later."

--

Dean made quick work of changing the diaper before laying John in his crib. His green eyes explored everything in sight, which wasn't much but a lot to a two week old who had seen nothing except the inside of a plastic box and the walls of a hospital. He felt his father-in-law standing next to him. "You caught on to that diaper thing a whole lot faster than I did."

"Yeah, well… I started changing diapers when I was five." Dean shrugged, lowering his voice as the door opened and the gigantic shadow of his brother towered over them. "It's like riding a bike, you never forget."

"Dude, you changed my diapers?" Sam scrunched up his face.

He shrugged again as he let John take hold of his finger. "Dad's overtime on Miller-time shifts had started about that time. Somebody taught me how… so, I just kept it up." He cleared his throat. "But that diaper genie is a blessing, I tell you. Can't tell you the smell, being trapped in the Impala for more than an hour with one of your diapers."

"Funny." Sam rolled his eyes. "You know where Dad's journal is? I wanted to look something up."

"Night stand, probably." Dean shrugged. "Where Liz puts all my junk."

"Now, you said that you wanted to carve something into the base?" Jeff looked the crib over. Looked fancy but the Ramirez clan wouldn't hurt much for providing it.

Dean set his jaw as he thought about what he could say that wouldn't freak out his father-in-law too much. "Um… Maybe J.P. Winchester on the end panel."

"J.P.?" Sam looked up from where he was flipping through the journal.

"John Parker."

"I like it." Jeff puffed up his chest.

"Sucking up is not a flattering trait." Sam poked fun at his brother as his phone rang. He snapped it open and suddenly clammed up; his voice dropping an octave. "hi."

Dean nodded to himself. "My brother hooked up with that pretty nurse at the hospital and now he's too good to talk to us. She's going to be the death of him."

"The brunette?"

"That's the one." Dean nodded as he lifted his son into his arms, carefully bundled to keep him warm as they navigated the confined cottage.

Sam tossed his brother the finger and flipped through the journal while he listened to Serena on the other end of the conversation. He frowned when he found something tucked into the back flap. "Hey Dean."

Dean passed the baby to Jeff before taking the folded sheet of paper. There were nine lines on it. "Dean, don't let your worries take you over. There are still things coming. There are still battles to be fought. You have everything you need to beat it. You have to wait for the right time. I know you will be the one to see this thing end. Just remember that your girl and your son will be okay. I am always proud of you and your brother. Be safe and get that demon for our family and for yours."

A lump in his throat took his words from him. He looked to Sam. His brother leafed quickly through the journal but didn't find anything else. Liz walked out of the bathroom, drying her hair. "What's going on, guys? Why is it so quiet?"

Jeff, confused as he was, was the one to turn to her. "They found something that I think it shouldn't be possible for them to find."

Dean stared at the nine sentences and had to clear his throat before he could get the words out. "Dad paid you another visit."

"When?" She rushed forward to read what she had written.

"Don't know…" He blinked back the tears. "It's been awhile since I opened the journal… so probably before John."

"But we don't know when." Liz sank down into a chair.

"He doesn't know your name." Dean stated suddenly.

"Or maybe he didn't want to tip his hand." Sam suggested. "Who knows what conditions are like? We don't know how he's doing what he's doing and he doesn't do it all the time so maybe there are certain conditions needed before he can and he can't say too much."

"What was the vision?" Liz began rifling through her notebooks and her drawers. "If I didn't remember his visit, then there was a vision. Something had to have happened for him to do that. He never just shows up without me knowing something."

After a beat, Dean and Sam were right there with her, flipping through notebooks and scanning for things they hadn't seen before; mention of demons or occurrences that they had not already dealt with. Then Dean found it. Most of it, he knew from studying his father's journal and the leftovers of the hunt that had led them to Salvation all those years ago. What had caught his eye was the location of something he had just found before John was born. He sat down to study the pages and the images that were scrawled next to them.

Timing. Timing was what struck Dean on the notes that his father had left him. He had all the information he needed but the time wasn't right. Liz took the notebook from him and read over what she must have written during a blackout vision.

"Kids, I hate to interrupt but what exactly is going on?" Jeff cleared his throat. He had no problems holding on to his grandson while Liz and Dean were preoccupied but their lack of communication had disturbed him.

TBC


	58. Chapter 57

Part 57 – a month later…  
(February 28, 2011)

"I think he might be a little evil." Sam proclaimed from where he lay on the floor with his nephew.

"What makes you say that?" Dean snorted from where he was sorting through the baby clothes for something suitable for John to sleep in.

"His eyebrows do that thing that yours do."

"And that makes him evil?"

"Well, he looks like the devil when he does it." Sam winced when the little hand caught him on the chin, his tiny nails scratching a bit. The little devil between his arms seemed to think that was funny.

"He's just smart."

"Uh-huh. Sure." Sam had to catch the arching belly when John tried to see where his daddy's voice was coming from. "Where do you think you're going?" Sam lifted the little shirt and blew a razzberry into his belly. A wide toothless smile split his baby face.

"Bring him over here, will ya?" Dean had all the crap ready and the water had nearly cooled enough. Sam did as told and even helped out by cleaning up the dirty bottom before handing the baby over for his bath. He perched on the kitchen table to watch. Dean's shoulder hitched suddenly and he glanced back at his brother. "Dude, what are you staring at?"

"You, being normal for once." Sam admitted. "It's nice."

"We're not exactly the white picket fence family."

"No, that would be creepy and Stepford. This… I think is perfect for you."

"It's weird." Dean admitted as he carefully washed his son and watched the flailing arms exploring the water. "I mean… it feels good but I'm not used to it. I'm just kind of hoping it lasts. I keep wondering what I'm going to do when you find us a hunt worth the effort to leave. Or what I'm gonna do if ol' Yellow Eyes decides he'd tired of waiting for us to walk into a trap and just… come for us. Or if one of you gets a vision that means I have to walk out the door." He shrugged and looked down at his easily tired son. "This is Liz's first day back at the bar but I'm helping her out, cause I'm here. What is she going to do when we gotta take off?"

"You guys aren't talking to potential babysitters?"

"Dude, no. With the price on my head?" He glanced at his brother over his shoulder. "Asking someone that we don't know to take care of him… with ties we don't know about, susceptible to who knows what kind of demons… I don't know."

The door opened and admitted a shivering Liz. "Hey guys. Is it bath time already?"

"Almost done." Dean nodded and let his mouth be taken for a moment.

"I'm such a worrywart. I can't go to work for a few hours without missing him." She leaned on Dean and used his chest to warm up her hand before she rubbed John's slowly growing belly. "Came to make a bottle, too."

"Stuff is in the cabinet." He pointed with his chin.

Sam was quick to avert his eyes when Liz pulled off her jacket. "Lactating?"

"Yeah." Liz glanced down at her shirt. "Also came home to change. Hoping to catch him smiling but he doesn't look too interested."

"He was playing with Uncle Gigantor, he's all smiled out."

"It's so not fair." Liz made a face at Sam as she gathered herself some fresh garments.

"In my defense, I wasn't really trying to make him smile. He hit me in the face and thought that was funny. Kind of like Dean watching Wile E. Coyote, only with less drool." Sam cracked, perfectly content to watch his brother's family from his perch on the table.

"Shut up." Dean barked softly at him while he watched John stretch his legs in the water a little longer. The last hour or two of stimulation was already proving to be too much for the kid as his eyes began to droop. "C'mon, bud. Time to get out."

By the time John was dried and dressed, he had a fresh bottle to send him to sleep. Liz backed away slowly. She grabbed Dean's jacket and shrugged into it. "Call me if… it's pretty slow tonight… so…"

"I think I got this."

"Yeah, okay. I'll be home in a few more hours." She grabbed the door handle but let go and marched back into the cottage. She pressed kisses to John's head and then caught Dean's mouth for a brief kiss before she was out the door.

"I'm proud of you, Dean." Sam told his brother. "It's… refreshing to see you in this situation. I know I gave you crap but… this is what I wanted to happen with you and Liz. I'm glad it did."

"You know me. I like the scenic route." The elder Winchester carefully switched on the radio to beginning the evening pacing.

"You guys doing okay, now?" Sam asked carefully. A glare was the only response. "I just… you guys were going at it pretty heavily before… you know… is it better now?"

"I don't know."

"But…"

"We don't have time to fight right now. I'm watching him every moment that I'm awake. If he shivers, I'm hunting down drafts. If he looks like he's going to sneeze, I'm on the phone. If his snot looks weird, I call the doc… Liz is the same way. I sleep from eight to noon. She's sleeping from midnight to seven. Honestly, I'm too tired to fight. He sleeps a lot but not enough to where I'm feeling like I'm sleeping much." Dean sighed, then yawned and tried to make sure he was holding the bottle the way he was supposed to. "Library thing working out for you?"

"It's boring, so I have a lot of time to check out those signs you were getting from Marty's friends. Look for similar things. The librarian thinks I have some morbid OCD thing." Sam laughed to himself.

"And Serena… that working out for you?"

Sam cleared his throat and looked away. He fidgeted for a moment before getting to his feet. "I like her." He moved to the window, leaning on the sill. "She scares me… cause… she's freaking perfect."

"Perfect is scary."

"The same way Jess was scary, the same way that Sarah was starting to scare me."

"C'mon. Sarah… normal was nowhere near her. She was just our kind of freaky."

"Serena went to Northwestern. She pursued some science major but had to pay bills… so she was taking nursing courses. She completed those because there was a job in Baxter, where her mother was ill. She's pursuing a medical degree while also trying to complete her physics degree. Just… taking the slow route." He let the smile cross his face because it was admirable. "Her mother's passed on but she's still trying because it was her dream. She got sidetracked by medicine but she's so smart… I can see her doing both."

"So… what's your problem?"

"I'm the problem. Freaky psychic visions and demon hunting is the problem. Right now, I'm just a guy working at a library because two of my girlfriends were killed." He scoffed at himself. "All I'm gonna do is get her killed."

"Not unless we kill that son of a bitch first. We're onto it. Dad's note-"

"Tells us nothing. We don't know what we know. It could be something that he thinks we know or something that we've forgotten."

"It's all we've got to go on." Dean kept his voice low as he set the empty bottle on the table and went about lightly burping his son. "I want this thing dead. Every day that I'm here and I'm living this… normal life… the more I want it dead. Do you think I don't wonder if somehow it will get them while I'm 10 yards away working on a car? Or if maybe I should have never laid a finger on Liz? It is what it is, Sam. You help me take this demon down… and I'll make sure you finish college. I will find a way… cause if I can take that son of a bitch down… I can come up with the cash to see you out of this life."

"You really think we can get out of it?"

"I have to." John yawned on his father's shoulder and a bit of milk came up with a surprise burp but he was asleep very soon. Dean laid his face against John's head and inhaled. "Do you really think I want him knowing what we know?"

The following month…  
(March 18, 2011)

Dean ate heartily and sipped his beer. He nodded absently to Kyle who was going on and on about a set of instructions that Bobby had left behind. It had been nearly three months and the supernatural librarian had yet to return. Kyle was pulling his hair out. "Billy has got to go but I can't get Pete to man up and do it."

"It's Friday. Do it today or wait until next Friday. Don't fire a guy on Monday." Dean shook his head and stretched his neck so that he could see into the carrier next to him on the bar.

"How did I end up being the guy that fires people when the boss is gone? How is that me? What did I do to deserve this responsibility?"

"You take charge. Sometimes that's a sin." Dean shrugged and polished off his beer. He reached into the carrier and pulled his son out. Fist in his mouth, he looked around.

"So, he's finally allowed to be seen in public. I'll tell you… some people didn't think there was a baby."

"Took him for a checkup and everything's okay. He's not too far behind for his age. Liz was freaking out about that."

"Liz gets like that." Kyle finished his dinner and ordered them a couple of more beers. "Looks healthy to me. Fat now. Box-boy was a skeleton when you guys brought him home."

"Box-boy?" He raised an eyebrow at his coworker.

"Michael and I dubbed him Box-boy… cause of the…incubator. When he's older, he'll appreciate it better." Kyle reached over and took hold of the youngest Winchester. "The name was given out of love, you hear me? You have to develop some tough skin because the aunts are coming this summer and your cheeks will not stand a chance."

"Aunts?"

"Maria and Isabel are both planning to visit once the snow is gone for good." Kyle let John's feet touch the bar but the kid was nowhere ready to stand. "Isabel's planning on bringing her brood."

"Isabel has kids?"

"Two of 'em. A boy and girl. She's got the Christmas card family she's always wanted."

"Dean!" Liz gasped when she saw him. "What are you doing? It's too smoky in here for him."

"The smoke is coming from one guy." Dean pointed to the hunter in the corner. "It's not even tobacco and I can't smell it."

"Which is worse." She took her baby from Kyle.

"He needs to get out of the cottage. He's healthy and he needs to socialize or else we're going to have problems with… apron strings and cords later on." Dean nodded to Pete, who leaned in to whisper something for Kyle.

"Dammit." Kyle picked up his beer and glanced at the table where Billy was finishing his dinner. "I gotta do it tonight."

Pete turned when Hannah and Yvette joined them. "Dean, I don't think you want to be here when Stan fires Billy."

"I'm with my family. What can he do?" Dean rolled his eyes.

"Mom, ask." Yvette tugged on her mother's hand.

"I'm going to go help." Pete jerked his head in Kyle and Billy's direction.

Hannah shook her head and sighed. "Liz, Yvette would like to hold the baby but she's too shy to ask."

"How old are you now?" Dean peered down at the little girl.

"Eight." Came the quiet answer.

"Wow. Has it been that long?" He looked from Hannah to Liz. "Since…"

"Yeah, almost five years." Hannah nodded and blinked back tears. Clearing her throat, she pulled a chair to the bar and instructed her daughter to sit. "Just for a little bit, sweetie."

"Dean will help you. I have to get back to work." Liz pressed kisses all over her son's face.

Dean helped Yvette get settled in the chair and softly instructed her how to hold her arms. "He's going to wiggle a bit so if you think you can't hold him, just say so, okay?"

"He looks really good." Hannah told Dean when he straightened up. "I would never be able to tell he was premature."

"It was only a few weeks and the docs cleared him. He's catching up." He nodded to himself, then lowered his voice. "How much does she remember about what happened?"

"Not a whole lot." Hannah whispered back. "Right afterward, there were nightmares… and then she just got over it, seems like. She remembers you, I know that much. I'll tell you… Pete had half a mind to pick up that stuff, the way Marty and Bobby do it but after that… he said he'd just run errands. Just, thank God that you were there."

Remembering that particular trip through Valor Springs, the one thought that Dean hadn't had was to hang up his hat. He'd been thinking about it more and more recently but that little girl had just gotten four extra years of life because of him… because of Liz. Yvette bent her head and smelled John's head, then lifted her face to them. "He smells like baby powder and milk."

Dean could only nod to that as he sank down to eye level with her. "It's been a long time since I've seen you. How have you been?"

"I see you all the time." She shook her head. "But you're always busy and Daddy says I can't bother you."

"Yeah, well. Work, what are you gonna do?" He squeezed her foot. "I never got the chance to thank you in person for the brownies. I know I loved them and Sam did, too." He watched her blush and duck her head. "Listen up, I'm sorry that I'm busy sometimes but it's okay to say 'hi' to me. I'll probably be around a good long while, now. I got this little guy to take care of."

"Okay."

"And when you're 15, maybe we'll hire you as a babysitter." He winked at her.

"You're going to make her head explode." Hannah warned. "You have no idea the fit she threw when she found out about you guys getting married and the baby's impending arrival."

"Mom." Yvette scoffed, then pouted.

"You don't want me. I'm old." Dean tapped her nose. "I'm 32. Do you know how old I'm gonna be when you turn 18?" She shook her head at him. "By the time you are legally able to marry me, I'll be 42 years old. There will be plenty of guys your own age to chase after."

"God, I hope not." Hannah muttered.

Dean smirked up at her but wiped it away when his eyes met the little girl's. "Don't worry, we'll find you one that your folks approve of." Then John started his fussing. "Okay. I gotta feed him. Let me take him back." He had just straightened with John in his arms when he caught Sam waving him over. Yvette threw herself at his legs, nearly knocking him off balance. "Whoa, there."

"Thank you, Dean." She grinned up at him and then followed her mother and father out the door.

When Dean got to the booth that Sam had set up, there were clippings and printouts in very precise rows. "It's happening, Dean."

"What exactly is happening?" He fought to balance baby and bottle while looking over the information.

"Freak lightning storms… temperature fluctuations." He pointed to the pile. "Six locations… but only two have cattle mutilations… so far. One…" He picked up an article. "Just like the one you found. It's starting again. Dad might have been wrong about the cycles… maybe there are no cycles. Maybe… the demon doesn't really pick certain years or maybe he's waiting on certain kids… like… bloodlines." Sam frowned even as the words came out of his mouth.

It sent a shiver up Dean's spine. It made his mind go places that he'd rather it not. Whose bloodline was the demon following? Mary's or John's? Then he looked at the locations. "We have to leave tonight. No more children are going to lose their parents and that's all there is to it."

"You planning on taking John with us?" Sam motioned to the baby in his brother's arms. "And we have two possible locations. We also do not have a weapon against this thing."

"We can stop him from doing whatever the fuck he does." Dean let his mind wrap around it. Why visit the kids? What does he do to them? Why certain ones? "Evolution, right? Darwin and shit." He absently burped the baby as he paced. "How does breeding work?"

"Like selective breeding?" Sam sat back to think. "Gene studies, mostly. Cross breed a sturdy cow with a cow that tastes good and do it a couple of generations… you get a sturdier beef cow that tastes good. So… if he's studying the traits, if he's waiting for the right time to introduce what?"

"He's not an incubus. He's not breeding that way." Dean mused aloud. "So… how is he… why… what's the point?"

"It's an army." Liz announced. No one had even heard her walk up. "It's about blood." She touched John's head. "This one would be choice breeding, if he could be swayed. That's what he does. One visit to open the door to coming over. The key is to make sure that the child will shut the door on his own. Free will."

Dean flicked his eyes to Sam, clenching his jaw. "So, uh… Dad… what do we have that can take this son of a bitch down?"

Liz's smile became eerily broad. "There's a place. You have to lure him there." She took Sam's pen and started scribbling coordinates. "I have a plan. You boys ready for this?"

--

The bar was nearly empty. Marty never approached but he knew there was something off about his favorite waitress and it had been going on all night. Her stance was all wrong, her smiles were not her own and she never once tried to pick up the baby. She would talk to the boys, then pause and stare at the sleeping babe. She would touch his head but she wouldn't take him from Dean, which was not like Liz.

When he had kicked the last customer out and cleaned up the last of the bottles, he approached them. Slowly. Then she turned and spotted him. "Marty, think we could get a few more beers? We'll be out of your hair in twenty minutes, I swear."

"Winchester?" Marty froze. Dean made a sly motion with his hand. "Uh, yeah, man. Let me turn off the light first. You can stay as long as you need."

"We appreciate it." Liz crossed her arms and turned back to the booth.

"Okay." Sam nodded as he mentally catalogued what he needed to gather and what he needed to stockpile into the trunk.

"I need to get this guy home." Dean shook his head abruptly. "It's probably freezing outside."

"He's a good-looking kid, Dean." Liz moved closer, her hand laying on the top of John's fuzzy head. "Takes after his mother any?"

"Don't know yet."

"A Winchester boy, huh?"

"Seems like it. I think his mother is going to curb his demon-hunting potential, though." A hand squeezed his shoulder, sliding up to his neck when he bent over to lay John in his carrier.

"You kill this demon and you keep them safe."

"I will." Dean nodded to himself before turning his head to see his father in his wife's eyes. "She doesn't know that you're doing this, right now."

"Doing what?"

"Dad… it's creepy. I know you're helping and I appreciate it… but it freaks her out and if…" Dean bit back the suspicions he'd had ever since he realized that Liz had had a black out before John was born. He wouldn't say them out loud. "She loses time when you do this. It hurts her, sometimes. She goes down before you take over. We've got little John now and… if you do this to her when she's holding him or giving him a bath… Do you know how hard it is for me to tell you that… after waiting so long for you to talk to me… that I need you not to do this again?"

"Dean, son…" She squeezed the back of his neck. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Okay… okay." He nodded to himself. "Dad, it kills me to ask you this. You gotta know that it does but I think I have to. When you're not here, where are you?"

Liz pulled a confused face and put her hand on her hip, shifting her weight as she looked over the bar. Then it seemed to click. "I forget… sometimes. The pain makes me delirious. When I'm here, it just feels like a nightmare. When I go back, this is all a really good dream. I can't even really hang on to it when I'm there."

"The pain." Dean murmured aloud. Brimstone and hellfire. Endless torment and damnation. Because of him. "How are you able to do this? We salted and burned your corpse."

"Sometimes you don't ask questions, son. Honestly, I… don't remember how I found it but I never really let go. There's something that keeps me hanging on and I don't know what it is. An energy but not… anything that you or I have ever encountered." She looked away, eyebrows furrowed. "I'm not asking the questions. I'm being as careful as I can. I'll be honest… there may be shit going down while I'm here. I can't stop it or know about it while I'm here… but shit going down is the only way I get this chance."

"So… right now… there's maybe some kid… stepping up on the demonic evolutionary ladder."

"Fuck." Sam punched the table. "Washington, right?"

"Probably." Liz nodded. "There is a price to pay for every day that passes and that demon is still among us but running into the fray without a plan… will only get us killed. One day to prepare."

"Okay." Sam nodded and looked to his brother. "We gotta do this."

"Okay." Dean nodded. They could be packed and on the road in an hour. "Dad, you have to leave. I need my wife back before I go." He gripped her shoulder. "Okay?"

"You boys… go do some good."

It was instantaneous. Liz's eyes rolled back and her entire body went slack. Dean had a good grip on her but still had to rush to make sure she didn't hit the table with her head. She released three huge breaths and opened her eyes. "Dean?"

"I'm right here." Dean lowered her to the floor, taking Sam's jacket for a pillow. "You okay?"

"What happened?" She bit back a sob.

"Are you okay?"

"My head hurts… and I think I might be drunk." She burped and slapped a loose hand over her mouth.

"Was he pounding them away?" Dean flicked his eyes over the bottles on the table and winced.

"I'm the lightweight in the family." Sam grabbed an armful of bottles to throw away.

"Wait a minute… hold on…Your dad got me drunk?" Liz struggled to sit up but the world spun. "John's on breast milk for crying out loud and he got me drunk." Her words were slurred. "Oh my God… I am so drunk."

"Marty, can you get Liz some coffee?" Sam called into the back.

"Is it Liz?" Marty called back.

"Yeah, she's back. Ain't you, baby?" Dean couldn't help the laugh. He should have expected it. It was kind of funny. "She's hammered but that's okay. She needs to relax a little."

"You're making fun, Dean Winchester." She tried to hit his nose with her finger but nearly took out his eye.

"Okay, c'mon. Let's try upright." He pulled her onto his lap.

Liz laid her head on his shoulder and willed the room to stop spinning. Sweat was the first scent to register. Sweat and old milk and beer. Baby powder and Stetson. Gunpowder and grease. "You smell awesome." She could feel his laugh in her bones. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held his head against hers. Frowning, she slid her fingers along the back of his neck. "Where's your necklace?"

"At Bobby's, I guess. Must have taken it off at work." He attempted to get them both to their feet. "Listen, Liz… you gotta get sober for me. Okay? Sam and I have to leave. This is it. The big thing. It's going down."

"No." She shook her head. "No, don't go… It doesn't feel right." She shut her eyes against the light and tried to keep her beer down. "I'm gonna be sick."

"It might be a good idea." Dean hefted her into his arms. "Sam, watch John."

"Dean, don't go." She groaned, the room was definitely spinning.

Sam watched them go and began gathering their things from the table top. Little John slept on in his carrier. Unaware of the fragile state of things around him. Marty appeared with a cup of coffee. "Hey Marty. Hate to cut and run on you like this but we have to go."

"She gonna be okay?" Marty was spooked. It was one thing to hear about a possession like this but to witness it was a whole other thing.

"Do us a favor and keep her here tonight. I'm going to run back to the house and grab what we need and some stuff for Johnny." Sam took their things with him.

Dean appeared five minutes later from the bathroom, without his wife. He gave Marty a look. "She's going to hate me when she sobers up. Just… do me a favor and take care of her. Call the doc and ask her about the whole bottle and beer thing. I want to wait but I can't. If it doesn't happen now, we might miss our window and then we're fucked."

TBC


	59. Chapter 58

Part 58 – The next day…  
(March 19, 2011)

Liz sniffed a little as she raised her coffee cup. Her hands shook slightly as she set it down. Thankfully her son was having a calm morning. Her head pounding with the remainder of John Winchester the elder's hangover, she could do no more than what was absolutely required. Apparently this was going to be the day to test her son on formula because she was going to toss anything she pumped for the next 24 hours… or 48, just to be safe. She'd never gotten a tally on precisely how much John Winchester the elder had drank while in possession of her body.

Kyle slid into the booth across from her. "You look like crap."

"My father-in-law was a lush." She cradled her head in her hands. "He popped in last night, then spent three or five hours strategizing and drinking heavily. Then he left me with his hangover and sent my husband off to battle a demon. I feel wrong about the whole thing and Dean didn't even listen."

"Lil…" Kyle reached over and took her hands in his. "I hate to tell you this cause I know that you know this but… this is what it's going to be like for you. Even if this is the last hunt… they will all be the last hunt. It was the same way with Max. Maybe it's the quality that attracts you… that willingness to be the wall between the world and all the wrong things but…"

"I do the same thing, Stan. I put myself in between danger and my loved ones. It's why I'm here, right? In Valor Springs, to do good deeds and avoid the law." She offered him a wan smile. "I'm scared, Kyle." He visibly winced at her use of his given name. "It's not just a hunt. It's THE hunt. I can't think. All I do is worry about the phone call I should get tomorrow… or about getting a different phone call tonight." Her face was smooth and unlined but she was weary. Drained. She could see the unease in Kyle's face. She was scaring him with her tone and behavior. "I don't know if I can live this way. It's been good, you know…"

"Yeah. No real fights since he was born, right?"

"Right." She looked to her son, wide-eyed and exploring the ceiling of the bar. "These past few months have been heaven. Working together to take care of him… knowing that we had the same worries, knowing that we would do anything for him… I know that I said that I knew he would have to go do this but… I just…"

"Never believed that he would go?"

"Maybe."

"If he didn't, then you wouldn't be in love with him."

"Maybe."

"Go home, Lil. Get some rest. I'll send Betty over to help out in a bit."

"I can't." She shook her head. "Not until he comes back or… I get that phone call."

"It could be hours or it could be days. Go home."

--

"Aw, what's wrong with your shoulder, Dean?" A young blonde. Four foot ten if he was an inch. It was kind of embarrassing but the same waif had nearly taken Sam's head off. Poor kid was probably a runaway, homeless.

Dean gritted his teeth as his shoulder was reopened. He'd be damned if he screamed. "Old football injury. Always acts up when a demonic son of a bitch sticks his finger in it!"

"Humor to cover your pain? I thought you were beyond such devices." The demon leaned in closer. "I heard you got married, had a beautiful bouncing baby boy."

"Jealous? Mrs. Evil Son of a Bitch not putting out anymore?" The finger dug deeper. "Or maybe you need a little blue pill? Or maybe it's cause you haven't hit puberty yet." He almost bit his tongue holding in the scream that time. "Touched a nerve huh? Yours or mine?"

"Dean, shut up." Sam groaned as he struggled from his pinned position across the room.

"It was pretty clever though… I mean, you're here. I'm here… and you're not getting out." Dean managed a smile.

"Daddy says 'hi'… well, he would, except that he's too busy screaming. Do you know the torment that we call hell, Dean? As I understand it, you're primed for a front-row seat… right next to your dear old dad." The demon inhaled as the blood gushed around his finger. "You know… when I'm done here… I should really go pay that lovely wife of yours a visit."

"You won't touch her."

"Or maybe I'll go to someone else… I've always had a thing for nurses."

"You son of a bitch!" Sam ground out, fighting the physical barrier as much as he could. Then a strange thing happened, a table flew at the far wall where the demon had Dean pinned. It splintered across the boy's back.

Finger still embedded in Dean's flesh, the demon-boy had a slow look around the room. "I get it. The timing. I'm supposed to believe that Sammy-boy finally cut his teeth and did something psychic?" Releasing Dean, the boy stepped into the middle of the room. "Who the fuck is here? This is my kill."

A drawer slid open, then four knives stood up. One by one, they flew end over end at Demon-boy. As he was deflecting the sharp objects, the overhead light detached itself and fell on the small boy.

"Poltergeists." The boy stood slowly, then turned in a circle. "No respect for the hierarchy of hell."

"Maybe he's protesting the dues." Dean grinned though he knew he was bleeding out.

Then a green glow filled the room, encasing the demon-boy. The shimmer of a man stood between Dean and the demon. Just a whisper in the air sent Dean crashing to the ground. A moment later, Sam fell from his own spiritual cage. The shimmer started to fade. "Get back to her, Dean."

--

Liz paced the room with her son in her arms. He was being fussy, but that was because he didn't like formula and he kept looking around for his daddy. Betty's help had been refused and now Liz wished she had absolutely anybody who could stop the crying.

The sun had just set and it didn't set her at ease, at all. The air was far too still. Checking the salt lines, she paced the cottage with her whimpering son. The hair on her arms stood just a split second before Johnny began to scream. The lights began to flicker. She screamed when the door flew open.

--

Dean used his teeth to pull the knot as tight as it would go. He needed to stop the bleeding before he passed out. He needed to make sure that he got there on time. He had to. "Sam."

"My foot is on the floor, Dean. I swear." Sam pushed the Impala to do the impossible; to travel faster than the speed of dark. He knew that the demon could not get there instantaneously. That it would take time to get there, but how fast was a good question. Faster than 90 in the Impala? How long would he stay inside that green bubble before he got out? He had the distinct impression that their saving grace was temporary and they had to haul ass to beat him, no matter how long he stayed inside. "Dean, who… do you… think… um…"

"I know who it was." Dean answered quietly. "No, I'm not going to talk about it. My week has been filled with crazy supernatural shit and Dad was right. There's a time and a place for questions… this isn't that time."

--

"Bobby… something's here." Liz turned in circles, scared of the very walls.

"I know." He fished through his bag for something. "Guess no one cared about the full moon tonight or the equinox today."

"I wasn't really paying attention."

"Of course you weren't. You also didn't know of a partial eclipse taking place while your kid was sick. You weren't watching the same signs I was and I had to haul ass to be in the right place to do some… pretty sick shit in the name of helping my friends." He pulled out an antique gun. "There are going to be two lunar eclipses this year and some hell-raising shit will be going on… and I mean that literally."

"Bobby…" She stopped when the lights started flickering again.

"How long has that been going on?"

"An hour or two?" She winced as the energy began coursing down her arms. She heard the Impala screech to a halt and a few moments later, her husband stumbled in. He had a shotgun in his left hand, right arm hanging limply by his side. "Dean?"

"You really Bobby?" Dean raised the gun level with the man's face. "Christo."

"Fuck you, Winchester." Bobby shook his head and tossed the gun over. "I'll trade you."

"What is this piece of shit?" Dean frowned at the gun he'd barely caught.

"Newly blessed is what. It was forged in… forget it. I'll tell you later. It has the right blessings on it. Some ammo that was hard to scrounge up. It's what took me so long. It's gonna work." The older hunter picked up the shotgun and began writing sigils on the windows with a marker.

"Is she okay?" Sam burst into the cottage. "Bobby?"

"Liz?" Dean stared at the glow surrounding her body. He'd heard stories about it but, frankly, he'd never really believed it.

"Take him, before I hurt him." Liz handed her son to his uncle. The second he was out of her arms, her arms crackled with unspent energy.

"I am not happy." A voice sounded from the open doorway. Marty.

"Jesus, no." Bobby breathed out.

"I don't know whose hoodoo you got going for you… but I am not having it." The yellow-eyed demon brought up a wind and the salt in the doorway began to blow away. The first person to feel his wrath was his old friend Bobby, tossed against the far wall before he could finish the symbol that he'd begun. "I give up on Sammy-boy. He's a lost cause. They say only a mother can really fuck you up but… I speak from experience when I say that Dad can do a bang up job, too… Hey, Sammy?"

"You don't get to call me that." Sam held onto Johnny with one hand and lifted his gun with the other.

"Give me the kid, I'll cease and desist on my vendetta with you Winchesters. You cost me a soldier, I'll take a replacement." Liz's jaw dropped, her eyes filling with tears. Her son. Marty-demon rolled his eyes. "You know perfectly well what a darling catch that Johnny is, Mom."

"You won't touch my son." Dean stood up straight and raised the gun.

"Now, now. You're not a south paw. You could miss." A taunt that managed to steady Dean's hand even more. "Even trade. I'll take the kid, raise him up like my own… the two of you could pump out a couple dozen kids to replace him before your ovaries dry up… Dean, come on. You know you can't keep your hands off that ass. It'll be no skin off your back." Marty stepped into the cottage. "If I could possess someone of better stock, I'd fuck her myself." Dean's gun cocked. "Oh, it's a compliment to your taste in women. How's the blood loss, boyo?"

"Brain only needs a pint to stay wet." Dean had to keep his hand steady. "Right, baby?"

"Uh-huh." Liz whimpered as the pain became too much. Her arms had that pins and needles feeling and not in the good my-arms-fell-asleep way. She inched toward her husband and felt marginally relieved when she felt Sam step behind her to use her body as a shield for John.

The lights flickered and dimmed. Liz swallowed a scream as the Marty she knew and loved, began to smile in a way that stopped her heart. A shimmer filled the air between Yellow-Eyed-Marty and the Winchesters. It seemed to enrage the demon further. "This is my party. Invite only. Get the fuck out of my way, poltergeist."

Whispers filled the air. Liz fought the urge to listen closer. Then a shimmer appeared right in front of her face. "Touch him."

"What?" She blinked. The flavor she got from the voice was too familiar.

The world stood still as a green shimmer appeared from floor to ceiling. A ghostly hand held the wall in place and its other hand touched Liz's face. Then she could hear its voice perfectly clear. "Touch your fucking husband and do it now, Liz!"

Dean was tempted to tell Sam to shoot it, but then Liz's hand slipped under his arm and pain shot through him when her hand touched his wound. Then a warmth swept through his body that made his knees wobble a bit. Then he could see the shimmer, too. So much clearer than he had three towns over. It was just an outline but there it was and touching Liz. It was pulsing. There were others. Other shimmers, outlines.

The warmth dissipated and Dean was able to switch gun hands. No pain, not even a phantom burn. Then shimmer spoke again. "Touch the gun."

"What?" Liz shook her head, clinging to Dean.

"Shoot it, together." Then his face was perfectly clear. "It's not over but it will buy you time. Focus, Liz. Send your energy into the gun. Dean, fire it to kill. He's not Marty anymore. If you don't, you'll force Marty to live with a sin he'd never forgive himself for. Trust me."

"Dean, is that?" Sam squinted at the shimmer but he couldn't get a good look at it or the others.

"After this, he'll have a taste for us, Liz."

"What?"

"Find Zan." He caressed her face. "Focus, Liz. Focus. You can do this."

Liz nodded, leaned her head against Dean's newly repaired shoulder, then slid her hands over his, cupping his hand around the gun. She took a deep breath, feeling the energy rise again in her body, visualizing it traveling down her arms and into the gun. "Is it uncomfortable?"

"No." Dean shook his head. It tingled but it didn't burn.

"Dean. You take care of her." Then it all vanished. Him. The shimmers. All of it.

He didn't blink. He fired the gun. Fired a deadly shot to his father's second oldest friend. He hoped that Bobby would forgive him. That Dr. Meyer would understand. That Pete and Hannah would not judge him too harshly.

Marty's body stilled. Blood spilled from the gunshot wound to the chest. Green energy crackled up and down his body before he hit his knees. The black smoke that erupted from his mouth was sluggish and translucent. Sam's mind raced for any incantation but none came to mind that would work to trap the demon, nor destroy him. Then it was gone out the open door. The room went completely still.

"Marty?" Dean whispered. The man moaned, not yet dead. Both he and Liz rushed to his side. "Marty?" Tears clogged his voice. "I'm sorry, Marty. I'm sorry."

"Marty?" Liz pressed her hands over the wound but she knew it had an exit in his back and she couldn't do both. "Marty?"

"Killed her." Marty's brows furrowed as he forced the words out. "Inside me and killed her. No reason. None." The gray in his hair and beard, suddenly more pronounced with his ashen complexion. "Used my hands… around her neck."

"Oh my god." Liz gasped as his words found recognition in her brain. Marty just… stopped talking. Stopped gasping for breath. Stopped. She lifted her hands and stared at them. Blood. Dean's. Marty's.

"Bobby?" Sam wiped at his eyes and clutched his nephew to his chest. Still wailing, little John drooled all over his shoulder.

Dean gave a moment for Marty. He closed the hunter's eyes and looked to his wife. "Liz, go wash your hands." She nodded dumbly but didn't move. Then Dean's hands closed over hers. "Liz, I need you to go wash up so you can take the baby from Sam. I need Sam to help me with Marty."

"O-o-o. Okay." She stuttered and moved on auto-pilot to wash her hands. It was as she was watching the blood flow down the drain, that it hit her what she had done. She had helped Dean kill Marty. She knew, somewhere in her head that she had aided to severely wound the Yellow-Eyed Demon but she had killed Marty in the process. Sobbing, she scrubbed her hands. Then Dean was there with his arms around her.

"Sh, it's okay."

"No, it's not."

Dean looked over his shoulder. "Call Stan over here. He'll help with the baby. I'm gonna get her cleaned up and then we'll take care of the bodies."

"Bodies?" Sam frowned from where he knelt over Bobby, John's wailing down to whimpering at last. "But…"

TBC


	60. Chapter 59

Part 59 – Two days later…  
(March 21, 2011)

Liz vaguely remembered her assisted shower and being tucked into bed with her son. When she had woken, Dean had been sipping coffee at the table and feeding their son. He said it was all taken care of and that was the last anyone had said about it. Sam had come and gone. The blood cleaned up when she wasn't looking. Bobby hobbled around the junkyard, looking worse than the day after Rumsfeld had been killed.

After two days of ignoring it, she needed to talk about it. "Dean…"

"Yeah?" He picked up his head from where he cleaned his guns on the kitchen table.

"What did you do with their bodies?"

"We called the cops. But we moved Marty back to his place. Sam and I made up a story." He gave her a level stare. "We had a good enough story. Cops believe it. I gave orders to the funeral home. Salted and burned both bodies this morning. Marty's got a plot on holy ground."

"So, she was dead? Dr. Meyer?"

"Yeah. Her family has her ashes." When the silence lingered, he picked up another piece to clean and reassemble.

"Was it really him?" She sat next to him at the table.

He caught the subject shift without having to ask which 'him' she was referring to. "You would know better than me."

"We healed you but… was it me or was it him?"

"I don't know the answer to that." He set down the rag and the muzzle of his pistol.

"There were others there but I don't know who they were. I didn't see them." She laid her head on his shoulder and let her hand fall to his thigh. "Six of them." He let her lean against him for the longest time, didn't even try to start cleaning his guns again. "I helped you kill Marty."

"If it had been me and that son of a bitch had made me do to you what he made Marty to do Dr. Meyer… I would have begged someone to kill me." Dean pulled her onto his leg. "I have to ask you some questions about what he told us." She nodded, her hands folding into the bottom of his shirt. "Who is Zan and why do we have to find him?"

Liz wrapped herself around Dean, tucking her head into his shoulder before she began explaining about Zan. Dean rubbed her back in soothing circles as she told the story as quickly as she could. Lingering pain evident, even after all this time. "He'll be ten years old this summer. He's perfectly human but it is inside him. Inherited from both sides."

"You ever think that because you've been… juiced… you know… that Johnny will develop something?" Dean cast a glance to the crib near the bed where his son was down for a nap.

"I guess that it's a possibility." She sat back on his lap to look him over. He looked tired. In addition to little John's erratic sleep schedule, he'd been doing double duty at Bobby's and at the bar, never mind that his nights were spent making sure they hadn't forgotten something in all the excitement. She pulled his shirt up his chest so that she could see his shoulder, to see for herself that the only scar tissue was left over from the year before and not the result of a demon dissection. When her lips brushed the raised flesh, his hands flattened against her back. It took very little encouragement to get Dean to lift his arms for removal of the grease-stained shirt. Gentle kisses soon turned into hungry, breath-stealing, need-filled tongue tangling.

--

Dean kept an ear out for the baby but kept his attention on Liz. She lay still against him but wasn't sleep. Her fingers wound tightly with his necklace. "You okay?"

"I think I will be." Liz whispered into his chest. "He's going to wake up soon."

"Yeah. I'm surprised he slept this long."

"It's not done and… you're gonna leave again."

"Yeah."

"Funeral's tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

"Did you mean what you said?" She lifted her head to meet his eyes. "If it had been you that…"

"Yeah." He nodded and didn't once look away. "I have to do research with Bobby for a while, though. Learn more about that gun he gave me… maybe you help. Cause… I'm thinking the thing that hurt him most was whatever you did to the gun before we fired it."

"Okay, I'll help." She kissed his chest over his heart. "Get some sleep. I'm back on duty tonight."

"I wish." He shook his head. He hadn't been able to sleep since pulling that trigger.

"Hey… will you teach me to shoot?"

The next day…  
(March 22, 2011)

The gathering was small. Not that many people would attend the funeral after what was said about what Marty had done to Dr. Meyer. The people who really knew Marty knew the truth. The lawyer, an oily looking man with a wrinkled suit, had asked the remainder of the grievers to a meeting in Marty's bar. He cleared his throat. "Some of you all know me… some don't. I've been asked to handle Martin's affairs. I'm his brother Davis Cabbott. I don't know what happened, just what the police have told me. I can't really picture my brother doing what they said he did. I'll admit that some of his ideas didn't make much sense to me… but he was my brother, so I left him to it.

"I guess I'll get to it. I'm in possession of Martin's last will and testament. I hope it's what he would have wanted, given that I hadn't seen him in a couple of years." He shifted his weight from foot to foot. "Marty wanted me to decide who the bar went to but I don't know his friends. Maybe the lot of you could help me out with that. I'd do all the paperwork free of charge… though I don't know who would be willing to take the place after whatever went on upstairs… As far as his things go, I think Robert would know better about the books and odds and ends. I'd just like the opportunity to keep some of his things for myself."

"You got it, Davis." Bobby nodded.

"Pete, there's some specific… trinkets and stuff for Hannah and Yvette and you, of course… I'll need help finding them. Liz?" He looked around for the acknowledgement of the name. "I'll need your help with the books until ownership is settled. I'm closing the bar until that gets straightened out. I'll call you all tomorrow for whichever. Thanks for coming."

Liz looked to Dean, who didn't seem so happy about the turn of events. He just shook his head at her and grabbed the baby carrier. "Dean, come on…"

"Winchester?" Davis frowned and fished a notepad out of his pocket. "Dean Winchester?"

"Yeah."

"Sorry I left your name out. Martin left me a note that you might be hard to track down. He's got some of your father's things… other stuff, maybe, that he wanted you and your brother to have."

Dean looked to Liz. "Okay… Listen, uh… if you need help finding things, sorting things. You can ask us. We practically live in this bar."

"It's not like I have job, right now." Liz agreed. "I'll come by tomorrow afternoon and get you started."

"I lift heavy things here… have for most of my life." Dean nodded to him.

"Winchester. That name… it's… been used pretty consistently by my brother for… God only knows how long." Davis cleared his throat. "Maybe you or Robert could tell me… what…"

"It's not a story that anyone would believe." Dean offered. "Just know that Marty was not a murderer… and as for the cops and everything else goes. They're better off not knowing the truth… and… it's being taken care of."

"Wow… Yeah. You sound like Martin… I'll just… take your word for it."

A month later…  
(April 22, 2011)

Missouri lifted the baby into her arms. "Well, he's a healthy child."

"He eats like he's got a black hole in his stomach." Liz pointed to her husband. "Like someone else I know."

Dean looked up, his mouth full of sandwich. He tilted his head at them. "What?"

"Don't talk with your mouth full, Dean." Missouri chided as she took her time settling little John against her chest. "Your dad would have loved to see this boy."

"He has. He's proud."

"What did I tell you about talking with your mouth full?" She spun to look at him. "If I had my spoon, I'd take it to you in a heartbeat." Then she frowned. "What do you mean 'he has'?"

"Who do you think tipped us off?" Dean washed down his sandwich with a beer.

"You said Liz did that."

"I'm in the room." Liz sighed but traveled slowly to her husband's side.

"I said Liz had an episode. That's what happens when my dad takes the wheel." Dean kissed his wife's head, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "He's not sure how he's doing it but he mentioned something about an energy. Nothing that he'd ever seen in life… so… yeah. You figure that one out."

"Spirits don't just come in and out of… hell, Dean." Missouri frowned, racking her memory for anything she could use.

"You don't think I know that?"

"There were seven of them total, I think." Liz murmured. "Max, John and five others that I couldn't make out. I don't think they needed us to see them. I think they were back up."

"Hey." Sam nodded as he walked in with baby supplies in his arms.

Missouri stared at him. "It takes you two hours to buy diapers?"

Liz coughed back a laugh but Dean didn't even try to hide his smile. Sam froze. "What?"

"I'm not sure I like this girl you're seeing, Sam. She's loose."

"Missouri!" Sam exclaimed and tossed the diapers onto the changing table. "You don't know her."

"I don't need to. Between the three of you, I know enough."

"Clearly not." Sam took a breath to calm himself down.

"That's right. Don't you think those thoughts about me." She turned her attention back to the baby in her arms. "Well then… this handsome man is special but not today. Later. He'll grow into it. Dean, Liz, you do good work."

Dean smirked down at his wife, who stuck him in the ribs. "What?"

"You know what." Liz poked him again.

Missouri tried not to smile but Sam was oblivious to what anyone was talking about. "What?"

"I'm barely recovered from having one of his melon-headed children and he wants more."

"I didn't say right now." Dean tried to defend himself. "But he's gotta have a little brother to knock around."

"Good parenting, Dean." Sam rolled his eyes.

"Let's just focus on the one we've got." Liz groaned and reached to take her son from Missouri.

"Now, this place… is clean." Missouri motioned to the room around them. "It has its wounds though. Deep ones. Keep it clean and keep the wounds from festering."

"Only way to prevent gangrene!" Dean and Sam chimed in together.

"Your father…" Missouri took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "If he wasn't already dead, I'd kill him for the way he raised the two of you. I came all this way to do you a favor."

"Ignore them." Liz shook her head and propped her son on some pillows on the floor. "They're babysitting while I take you over to M… to the bar."

Dean rolled his eyes when the door shut behind them. He shoved his sandwich into his mouth and motioned for his brother to watch the baby while he got out of his work clothes. He tossed the greasy pile into the garbage pail that Liz had set up for him, tired of his grease ruining her clothes. Then he stretched out on the floor with the baby, who kept falling over every time his uncle sat him up. "Chill, dude… he won't start doing that until he's a few months older… you didn't."

"How do you remember all this stuff? You were four." Sam scoffed as he gathered his long limbs to sit in a chair and let Dean have his daddy time.

Dean shrugged as he dangled a toy for John to grab at. "Only time that I knew what I was doing was when I was taking care of you. Dad was drinking and everyone was fighting. Even when we stayed with Pastor Jim… I would rather take care of you than play."

"Why?"

"Dad was gone for… a week, I guess. When he got back, I was happy to see him, you know…" Dean took a deep breath and grinned when John turned a wide toothless smile on him. "I was gushing about everything you had done and when I told him that you had said… 'dada' or something like that. The… look on his face. I remember thinking 'my dad is back' because after Mom… he wasn't the dad I knew anymore. Anything I could tell him that made that look come back…"

"I spent so much time asking him about Mom… I should have been asking about us… you know?" Sam turned his head when a knock sounded at the door. "It's open!"

"Nice, dude." Dean stretched so he could see as the door opened.

"Liz?" A head poked in.

"Maria!" Sam jumped to his feet. "Hey!"

"Sam." Maria threw open the door. "Where's Liz?"

"She took a friend of ours to the bar."

"Why is it still closed?" Maria stepped inside to let Michael in.

"Liz wanted Missouri to look it over before we started doing business there." Dean answered from the floor.

"Oh my God! He's so cute!"

"Hey." Michael nodded his greeting as he stepped inside and shut the door behind him. Dean returned the nod and let Maria pick John up off the floor. Michael leaned against a wall and glanced around and seemed not to be impressed by any changes that had taken place since the last time he'd been inside. He caught Dean's eye. "You take care of her, man. All I ask."

"Fair enough." They shook on it and turned to watch Maria's attempts at playing aunt. "You finally married her, huh?"

"You know… makes her happy."

"Yeah." Dean nodded in agreement.

"It should be a simple thing. I'll just need to gather some supplies." Missouri's voice filled the room when the door opened again. The older woman stood stock still when her gaze fell on Michael. She tilted her head at him and approached slowly. "Busy for a slow thinker."

"W'the f—" Michael's exclamation was interrupted by Missouri's swat against his chest.

"Don't you dare curse in front of that child."

When Michael lifted his hand, all women in the know dove for him. Liz, being closer, gripped his shirt. "It's okay, Michael. She's a friend and she's right… you curse in front of my son and I'll light you up."

"Dean, honey, have I told you how much I like her for you?" Missouri took a seat where she could see Maria and the baby. "Hi, darling. I'm Missouri."

"Ooh. She's the psychic, Michael!" Maria screeched, looking apologetic to Liz when John whimpered.

"Whatever." Michael stormed outside.

"He's a little sensitive, isn't he." Missouri murmured, her mind lingering on what little she had gleaned from the young man.

"A little." Liz agreed and took her son from Maria to calm him down.

"Do you read palms?" Maria ignored her husband's swift exit.

"Not really." Missouri shook her head.

"I knew it. It doesn't do anything." Maria sighed and looked at the happy family. Dean hovering behind the chair Liz had sat in with her son. "Look at that. I got married first but you have the whole package. It's so sweet… though who knew Mr. Badass ever had a chance with you."

"Marie… Shut up." Dean narrowed his eyes at her.

"Maria or Mary. I was never Marie." She stuck her tongue out at him.

"Missouri Mosley, this is Maria Guerin." Liz finally did a proper introduction. "Her husband Michael is outside… pouting, I guess."

"You know how he gets around strangers." Maria shook her head. "He's darling but… you named him John. It's the vanilla of all names."

Feeling Dean bristle, Liz cleared her throat. "It's a very strong name and a Winchester favorite."

"Only one of us not in the bible." Sam teased.

"Yeah, well… there's a club I'm not looking to belong to." Dean rolled his eyes.

"Well, I would love to sit and chat all evening, but I came up to work." Missouri started to rise.

"Well, what do you need done?" Sam sat up, eager to please.

"Well, for one, I have to track down the ingredients that I didn't bring with me."

"I'll do it." Sam straightened. "I have to go…"

"Go where?" Liz turned to face her brother-in-law. "Baxter?"

"Maybe." He pouted a little.

"Boy." Missouri rolled her eyes but pulled a list from her purse. "Be discreet."

"Take one of Bobby's cars for your booty call. You're not defiling my car." Dean yanked his keys out of his brother's hand.

"Fine." Sam growled and stormed outside.

"He'd better be back by tomorrow morning." Missouri adjusted the blouse that had slipped when she'd picked up her purse. "Well, you've got more company coming."

"Yeah, Isabel should be here tomorrow. We all want to participate. The Demon is affecting us all, now." Liz nodded sadly, turned to glance at her husband, who was quiet.

"Isabel said she would be in by afternoon… there's something she wanted to discuss with you. She didn't give me details… just said that she and Jesse had to make a stop along the way." Maria filled in. "So… tell me what's gonna happen with the bar."

"Bobby and I went in as partners… to keep it the way it is." Liz took a deep breath. "Marty…"

"Marty would have told you not to be stupid but… he wouldn't want anyone else touching his bar." Dean shrugged and lifted John into his arms for his bath.

"I'll explain all that later." Liz stared after him. "When Isabel gets here. I don't want to have to tell it twice."

"God, that looks so weird." Maria hissed as she watched Dean move around gathering John's things for his bath. "You've totally tamed the beast."

"I wouldn't say that."

"Dean's never fit into anyone's view of normal." Missouri studied the girls in front of her. "What's going on, ladies? What is company bringing to the party?"

"What's that?" Liz leaned forward.

"You're both worried about something. Not the same thing exactly… but I'm trying my best not to be nosy."

TBC


	61. Chapter 60

Part 60 – The Next Day  
(April 23, 2011)

Liz looked up from where Missouri was installing the sashays in the walls. She'd have Dean plaster them in later. Maria and Michael were arguing over what to have for lunch. She had blocked them out an hour ago. John… was at the shop with his dad, no doubt picking up bad guy habits even though he could barely do more than sit propped up on a pillow. She hoped that Dean would leave him in the carrier and that he wasn't exposing him to dirty exhaust valves.

They all heard the car pull up at the same time. Liz moved to the window and tilted her head when she counted heads. Jesse and Isabel and the babies in car seats but there was one more. Isabel, looking impossibly thin, took one child and handed her off to her father, then unstrapped another baby. And then the ten year old emerged from the backseat, backpack slung over one shoulder, and his father's posture about him. Liz's heart skipped a beat when that mop of dark hair was tossed just like Max had once done.

"Holy shit." Maria whispered from right beside her. "I guess that's what her surprise was."

"I'll kill her." Michael growled and was out the door before anyone could stop him. They watched Isabel refuse to acknowledge any of Michael's chastisements. Jesse just moved passed them to the door.

"Hi." Liz greeted him with a hug and took a moment to ooh over the little girl in his arms. A sleepy one-year-old. A moment later, the boy walked in and glanced around.

Jesse cleared his throat. "Isabel will explain all of it when Michael is done with her but… Liz, this is Adam Douglas. Adam, this is Liz. That's Maria Guerin."

"This is Missouri." Liz gestured, her eyes on Adam. "Missouri, this is Jesse, Sophia and Adam."

"Darling babies, everywhere." Missouri swooped in. "Such… interesting… flavors."

"That's one way of putting it." Liz offered her a smile. "Come in, everyone. Get relaxed… I think Michael and Isabel will be going at it a while."

"I'll go retrieve Alex." Maria excused herself.

Silence took over the cottage for a moment. Adam tossed his backpack on the ground and took his time to inspect the small home. Then he eyed Liz up and down. "You the lady that was married to my biological father?"

"Yeah." Liz nodded. "You want to see a picture?" The boy only shrugged. Liz moved to her nightstand to retrieve the picture that Max had drawn. She stared at it for a long while before passing it to the boy. "He drew that."

"Wow, he was pretty good." That was the only comment he had after looking at it for a moment or seven.

Isabel walked in and hugged Liz, ignoring the seething Michael on her heels. "I know I should have warned you but… I didn't know how."

"It's okay. We were just…" Liz shrugged and looked to Michael. "Think you could go grab Dean and John?" Michael didn't have to be asked twice, he stormed out.

"So, Liz, I hear you've acquired a business." Jesse cleared his throat. "I'm sorry to hear about your friend, though."

"Yeah…" Liz nodded and ran through the introductions once more. Then again when Dean appeared with John and Kyle in tow.

Isabel cooed over the baby, letting her own children wander all over the cottage. "God… and I thought Dean couldn't get any prettier and look at this."

Dean scratched his ear, turning a shade or two of red. Liz grinned up at him. "So, um… we're all here."

"Right…" Isabel took a deep breath before handing the baby to someone else. Jesse was busy getting bottles and dinner ready for her little clan. "Adam and I had some long discussions about who we all are… but I don't think I could do any of the other stuff justice."

"Aliens. Right." Adam rolled his eyes.

"I know how you feel, kid." Dean muttered. Then he realized that all eyes had settled on him. "What? I'm just saying… when I heard it… I didn't sleep for two days."

"He didn't." Liz shrugged. "I guess I'll catch you guys up on what happened here… what's still kind of happening."

"Two days." Kyle snorted. "I didn't sleep for a month."

--

Sam and Dean were sharing a quiet moment on the hood of the Impala when the footsteps came near to them. "Cool car."

"Thanks, kid." Dean nodded to him and jerked his head back to the cottage. "So, what do you think of that mess?"

"It's stupid." Adam shrugged. "They all look at me like I'm gonna start a killing spree or something."

Sam laughed and looked to his brother. "Nah… trust me… that's not how they look at you."

"My parents were aliens… what's your damage?"

"Hitting those teen years a little early, huh." Dean commented and sucked in a lungful of cool spring air. "Our dad was a hunter."

"What did he hunt?"

"Ghosts."

"So, all that crap in there was real?"

"Real enough that I got this." Dean lifted his shirt to show off his shoulder. "Iron poker went all the way through… and trust me… it wasn't a linebacker that did it."

"Did you know him?"

The question hung in the air for a long while. Just when Sam was going to say something, anything… Dean opened his mouth. "Yeah, I knew your dad."

"He wasn't my dad." Came the indignant reply.

"Look, it sucks about what happened to your folks." Dean cleared his throat. "I'm sure they were real nice people and everything. Your dad, though… the guy that gave you up… He didn't want you getting hurt." His eyes sought out the junked out cars around them. "I've got plenty issue with… Your dad was a good guy. Best that I've met in a long time. I could trust him and I don't trust too many people."

"You were there when he died?"

"Yeah." Dean nodded.

"And you married his wife? Dude, that's not right."

"Listen, you little…" Dean had to calm himself down. That's just what the little punk wanted. Any excuse to get the hell out. "It wasn't like that."

Sam slid off the hood and motioned for Adam to follow. He knew he needed to let Dean collect himself and he needed to have a word with the kid. When they had reached the other side of the cottage and a rusted pile of a car that used to be the Impala. "Do you know what this is?"

"Frame for a car like the one over there." Adam shrugged.

"Yeah… Dean almost died in the backseat there." He pointed. "My dad… got stuck in the passenger seat. I was the only one conscious when they airlifted us to the hospital in Rutherford. So, Dean and I… we know what it's like to lose parents. We don't have any. I get the attitude. Dean does, too, but you're pushing all the wrong buttons. You'll piss him off. He's likely to be the only friend you'll ever need. Don't get on his wrong side."

"So, it didn't cross your mind that maybe he let my biological dad die?"

"I was there. They were friends. Dean… wasn't the same after Max died. That was even before Dean knew that Max was an alien. You don't think he feels a little guilty being with Liz?" Sam swallowed down a lump. "I spent most of my life… outright hating my dad. He loved me so much… he gave his life for Dean… so that I could have someone I trust to make sure that I didn't go darkside and start killing people."

"Dramatic, much?"

"Yeah, maybe… you said those people in there look at you like you're going to go on a spree? I look at myself that way. Dean and Liz are the only things holding me together right now. They trust me even though there is something inside me that's evil."

"Isabel's going to leave me here." Adam stared off into the junkyard.

"Did she tell you that?"

"Just a feeling."

"You get those feelings a lot?"

"No one ever listens to me."

"Like who?"

"My parents." Adam was young but his tone wasn't. "I knew that train wasn't right."

"Just a feeling?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe you talk to Liz about your 'feelings' or whatever. She has visions."

"Oh yeah?"

"She sat in this car here…" Sam pointed to it. "And felt Dean dying… years after it happened… before she found out what really happened that day. Go on. Go in there and ask her something that she shouldn't know."

--

"My parents want him to spend the summer with them but… I think he should stay here. I mean, after all that happened and what…" Isabel thought about her brother trapped between worlds and the bile rose in her throat. "Maybe we're not the ones to take care of him."

"Shouldn't he be in school right now?" Liz blinked at Isabel. When she saw the look on Jesse's face, she realized how serious Isabel was.

"There's a six weeks left. If you get him registered next week, he shouldn't have too many problems. He's only in the fourth grade. If anything, he'll be ahead of the class." Isabel rushed on. "Liz… I want him. I see him and I see Max but…"

"We've got our hands full." Jesse supplied. "Phillip and Diane want to take him but after hearing about this Demon business. They wouldn't understand that or know how to take care of him and frankly… I'm scared."

Maria watched them all pace. Missouri was the one to speak up at last. "They're right. If this Demon is gunning for you, he'll hit where you're weakest. If he wants the boy, he'll take the boy. Dean and Sam are equipped to deal with him. You were planning to move into the bar's apartment, anyway. There's plenty of room for him."

Michael cleared his throat. "If this was alien stuff, I'd make Isabel keep the kid… I might even insist he stay with me for a while but the kid doesn't have any powers… Dean could teach him that… ghost crap."

"So you've all made this decision for me? And for Dean?" She realized that he had escaped some time ago. "It makes sense, sure. I'm not ready for this." She ran to the door and opened it. "Dean!"

"Chica… I hate to say it but he's safer with you until Dean and Sam figure out how to kill this thing." Maria agreed.

"We have to discuss this with Dean, first." Liz motioned him inside the cottage and quickly gave him a run-down.

"That kid hates us." Dean informed her.

"It's not about being his friend." Isabel stepped up. "It's about keeping him safe and providing for him. Once the Demon business is over with… Mom and Dad will take him."

"It's not like there's an expiration date on the Demon. My dad tried his whole life. We came damn close this last time but he knows our tricks now." His shoulders felt like they were going to break from the load that had landed on him.

Michael let out a whistle. "This is the system reject speaking but did anyone think to ask the runt what he wants?"

"Senor Dynamite and I rarely see eye to eye but I think he's right." Kyle offered.

--

Liz pulled Dean with her as she approached Adam. Bobby had the boy entertained with helping a dog he'd rescued. She looked to Dean, who shrugged. "Where'd you get that one? He makes Rumsfeld look like Dubya."

"Anyone asks? I got him on the side of the road. Adam, here, was helping me think of a name."

Adam gently rubbed the dog's head behind the ears. The dog was mean-looking and had seen better days. His ribs stuck out against his fur and the cuts on his back were telling. Mostly, he looked tired. "His name used to be Dumbass. I don't think you should keep calling him that."

"Me either." Bobby nodded to the boy. "So, who does this kid belong to?"

Dean watched Adam gently lift the dog's head to lie in his lap. When the kid looked up, his eyes immediately went to Bobby. He got that. He'd done it a time or two, himself. Dean nudged Liz. She stammered but answered the man. "Adam is Max… Nathan's son."

"Really?"

"Max gave him up for adoption and his parents passed away not long ago. Isabel claimed him." She chanced a look at the boy. "We were actually asked if we might want to take him… because of all the business that's been going on. Here being the best place to defend him if need be."

"I guess I understand that."

"Though, we figured… we'd ask Adam what he wanted." Dean knelt to examine the abused dog. "What do you say?"

"About what?" Adam scowled.

"Staying here with us." Dean gave the dog a gentle rub down with his hands. "We were about to move across the street. You'd have your own room. You could help us out with the baby… Bobby goes out of town sometimes. He would need someone to feed the dog."

"Think I could do that, Mr. Singer?"

"Mr. Singer." Bobby snorted and got down on one knee to join the party. "Call me Bobby, kid. Yeah, I could use a reliable man to help me nurse this guy back to health. You hang around enough; I'll put you to work… just like I did this one when he was your age." He jerked a finger at Dean.

"Maybe we spend the week showing you around." Liz offered, arms crossed in front of her. "Show you the schools… Stan's girlfriend might know where kids your age hang out."

"Why would you want me around? Aunt Isabel told me about what my biological mom did." Adam's hazel eyes were wide and round when he turned them up to the adults.

"Listen… I know far better than anyone the things she did." Liz took a deep breath. "You're looking at three people who knew your dad. Who trusted him. That's enough for us."

"Max is a good name for a dog. It's simple. He'd learn it." Adam mused.

"You're right. Good name." Bobby's flicked to Liz, who only shrugged.

"Well, come on. Let's get you squared away. We got an extra bed you can crash on until we get moved into the bar." Dean clapped the boy on the shoulder.

Liz took Adam's hand to help him up but by the time he got to his feet, Liz was on the ground.

TBC... heehee see y'all next week.


	62. Chapter 61

Part 61 – Same day – Liz's Visions  
(April 23, 2011)

_Dean glanced over his shoulder. "Serena, I swear to God, if you don't stop mixing your Sarah McLachlan with my Scorpions, I'm gonna…"_

_"You're gonna what?"_

_"This Lilith Fair shit… is not music."_

_"That's not what you were saying last week."_

_"I was drunk last week."_

_"You're drunk every week."_

--

_Liz backed up against the wall, her arms crackling. "Kivar."_

_"Liz." Came the answering growl. "About time we met… I hear that you'd like to speak with your lover… come closer and I'll send you to meet him."_

--

_"Mom." Cassie rolled her eyes._

_"What? He never brings his family with him." Mrs. Robinson hissed._

_"Did you ever think that maybe not all families are as close as ours is?"_

_"We're close." Dean cut in, a scowl on his face. "My father is passionate about his work and he's in the middle of something right now. So, he's not coming."_

_"I thought you also had a brother."_

_"He's got finals."_

--

_"Who're they?" Max read his newspaper._

_"Some friends of Marty's." Liz rolled her eyes and rubbed her aching back._

_"What happened to them?"_

_"The brother died." She shrugged. "Marty said he was going to open a tab for them and something about it not closing. I sense a brawl."_

_"Oh yeah?"_

_"They're in pretty bad shape. The dad's arm is in a sling. The son's face is all cut up… they're… grief stricken but I think any wrong look is going to start something."_

_"How about you work the bar and I'll bus the tables?"_

_"Maybe."_

_"Hey, um…" A mop of shaggy hair over a bruised face appeared next to Liz at the bar. His brown eyes weren't focusing on them. "My dad just opened a tab… Marty says that it's unlimited but… I need you to water his whiskey."_

_"I don't know…" Liz looked to her husband._

_"I know it's a lot to ask. Marty is an old friend of ours… My brother died a few days ago and my dad is looking to start shit… and I can't lose him, too." The brow furrowed as he fought the tears. "I'm not going to drink… so maybe I can stay on top of him but… he's over 50 but he never got the hint that he was supposed to wind down in his old age. I don't want trouble but um… I need to keep him out of the slammer until after… the…"_

_"Okay." Liz nodded to him. "I'll even talk Marty into helping you with that."_

_"Thanks…"_

--

_"Carmen! Your fucking cat is in my shorts again." Dean yanked his shorts out from under the furry bastard._

_"He likes the way you smell." Her voice joked from the other room. "He does it because he knows you hate him."_

_"Keep him out of my shorts."_

_"You don't mind when I'm in your shorts." She leaned around the corner, the sash from her robe in her hands._

_His eyes ran up and down her body. "Sweetheart, you're the only pussy I want in my shorts."_

_"You're a pig, Dean Winchester."_

_--_

_Kyle rubbed his wife's belly. "Three weeks."_

_"Of hell." Liz griped. "Dad's been talking about signing over the Crashdown again."_

_"Liz… maybe you should just take it easy this time."_

_"I was working full time right after Olivia was born."_

_"Yes and you also nearly collapsed from exhaustion." He reminded her._

_"What am I supposed to do?"_

_"You don't need to work." It was the same old argument._

_"Yes, I do. I can't just sit at home with the kids and wonder if you're going to come home tonight or tomorrow night or if I'm going to see a deputy cruiser pull up front and Soltero with his hat in his hands." She forced herself to take a breath. "You always said you didn't want to become a cop like him… and when he died… that's exactly what you did and I supported it because you needed it."_

_"And I appreciate it but I need to know that you're not going to work yourself into the ground."_

_"I have to keep busy, Kyle. Olivia and James and this one are going to keep me busy but one day it's just going to be you and me again and... I don't want to resent you because the only thing I know is raising children. Maybe I need the Crashdown, too."_

--

_Dean looked up when Sam walked into the room. Sam nearly leapt out of his skin. "Dude!"_

_"Hey man…" Dean gestured to the couch he sat on. "Your roommate said I could crash here, tonight. He's going to… whatever."_

_"Where's Jess?"_

_"The blonde? Um… making me some tea or something."_

_"What's up, man?" Sam grew more concerned the more Dean avoided speaking. "Is Dad in town, too?"_

_"No… Um… I left him in Nevada." Dean's brow furrowed._

_"Dean, here you go." Jess walked in, balancing a coffee cup, a sandwich and a bag of chips. "I figured you were hungry."_

_"No, but thanks." He took the cup of tea and actually liked it when he tasted it._

_"Okay, Dean, you're freaking me out. You're here, in the daytime… without Dad… you just turned down free food and you're drinking tea." Sam looked to his girlfriend. "When did he get here?"_

_"Just a little while ago." Jess sat beside him._

_"Look…" Dean took a deep breath. "Dad… just got married."_

_"What?" Sam blurted out._

_"Yeah… um… she's your age, actually." He ran a hand over his short hair. "I thought he was possessed or under a spell and I tried everything and I called everyone. It's the real deal… and I should have called you when it happened but… I just figured he'd sober up and realize what he'd done but… He's been sober a month and he's still with her and… Jesus Christ… Um… She's friggin' hot and… married to Dad."_

_"How… um… huh."_

_Dean reached into his jacket and produced a picture. "It's disgusting is what it is."_

_"Oh my God." Jess breathed out. "Are you sure she's even legal? She looks really young."_

_"She's 22 and she's got a bachelor in something… I don't know. I'm not calling her 'Mom'." Dean scoffed and got to his feet. "I'm at my wit's end, man. He just showed up at the hotel and said he'd gotten his own room with his new wife and…"_

_"So, is this it? Is he gonna stop running around?"_

_"No. Get this… he says she's a psychic and they're gonna run around together."_

_"Is she a gold digger?" Jess cut in._

_Both Winchesters snorted. Sam tried not to be too condescending. "Dad… he's a con artist. He works both long and short cons to make ends meet."_

_"I, uh… kind of introduced them." Dean admitted. "I didn't know the psychic shit. I just… I was making a play for attention… you know?" Sam rolled his eyes that he knew what his brother was trying to do with this girl. "Dad strolls into the casino and tells me there's a job for me to do… I got up and left and Dad sat to finish my beer…"_

_"And then they got married?"_

_"Yeah."_

_"He could easily be her father." Jess made a face._

_"Which is what I said." Dean nodded that it had occurred to him as well. "I never thought he'd do more than get hookers, man. He married someone younger than his youngest son. I think he's finally lost it."_

_"What's her name? Maybe we'll find something on her." Sam looked to his brother._

_"Liz--- Elizabeth Parker Evans Winchester… that's how Dad introduced her to me."_

--

_"Max!" Liz pulled her husband off the gambler._

_"He was asking for it." Max bit back a snarl._

_"Can't a guy have some fun?" The gambler got to his feet._

_"I let you get away with counting cards all night. Take your winnings and walk." Max cracked his neck. "You talk about my wife that way again… and you won't walk at all."_

_The gambler leered at Liz with green eyes. "Too bad, sweetheart. You and me… would've had a real good time."_

_Liz felt a jolt when he brushed passed her to leave. She touched his arm. "Be careful. Your brakes are almost worn down and there's a sharp turn on your way out of town."_

_"Concerned about me?"_

_"No." She shook her head. "You'll live but your brother won't survive the impact."_

_Clearly shaken, Dean turned and left the bar. He always hated Racine._

--

_"Jess!" Dean called out, nearly running into the blonde as he turned the corner. "Mom wants you."_

_"What does she want?" Jess hefted a two year old into her arms._

_"I dunno… I didn't ask. Hey…" He furrowed his brows as he looked her over. "Actually, maybe she wants to adopt you. There's a space that just opened up."_

_"A space?"_

_"Didn't you hear? Dad disowned me last night."_

_"He did not. He was just pissed. You know how your dad gets."_

_"How who gets?" Sam came up behind Dea__n__. "Sweetie, Mom wants to talk to you about the thing."_

_"What thing?"_

_"The thing."_

_"God…" Dean rolled his eyes and walked off, sipping his beer. "I'm never getting married."_

_"It's just Thanksgiving drama, Dean!" Jess called after him. "You'll be back in the will by Christmas!"_

_"What?" Sam frowned at her._

_"D__ean thinks your dad was serious__ about disowning him."_

_"Jess, the guy stole the Impala… traded it for start up money, lost half of it and conned his way into getting the damned thing back. Dad is tired of his shit."_

_"He loves your brother. Dean thinks he's really pissed. Dean is ready to walk. Go talk to your brother."_

_--_

_Max looked up from his meal to see a familiar face. Vague memories of high school flew through his head. He nodded to his nod as a greeting, then went back to his dinner with his family. Twenty minutes later there was a shadow over the table. "Sorry to interrupt folks but… you look familiar."_

_"We went to high school together." Max answered, waving off his son's interested look._

_"Evans! Right." He pointed to his name tag. "Kyle Valenti, obviously. You haven't been in town a long time."_

_"Yeah… I kind of took off right after graduation."_

_"Right, right."_

_"This is my son, Adam. My wife, Ava." Max made the introductions. "We… just got back to town. Visiting my folks."_

_"How are they doing?"_

_"Good. Dad's retired. Mom is going crazy."_

_"He was a lawyer, right."_

_"Your dad… he's not still sheriff, right?"_

_"Naw… he's… away." Kyle shook his head and glanced around. "Roswell sure has changed since we were kids, huh."_

_"Especially this place. I was telling Adam about it and he didn't believe me… and there's no proof to back me up."_

_"Yeah… well… The Parkers moved away five years after… after Liz…"_

_"Right…"_

_"The new owners are nice people but… they aren't familiar with that which makes Roswell famous… they didn't get the aliens."_

_Adam snorted and sipped his coke, wary of his mother's stern eye. Max flicked a glance at them then back up at his former classmate. "It's not the same… but… it never was after… Liz…"_

_"You got that right." Kyle took his coffee from the teenaged waitress that brought it to him. "Well, I'm on duty. Y'all enjoy your dinner and stay in Roswell. Do my best to keep it safe."_

_When he was gone, Max looked to his 'wife' and son. "I hate this town."_

_"Who was he really?" Adam sat up._

_"Some jock from school. We hardly knew each other."_

_"He dated the girl they were talking about." Ava supplied as she shoved a huge bite of ice cream into her mouth. "She died in here."_

_"Really? Somebody died here?" Adam bounced in his seat._

_"You're a morbid kid." Ava commented._

_"He gets it from his mother." Max sneered at the memory of that woman. "Yeah, someone died here. She was a kid… not much older than you. A bullet killed her. I knew her. She was my lab partner. Smartest girl I knew."_

_"Did you date her?"_

_"No… she was taken." He motioned for them to finish up. "C'mon. Mom and Dad want to finish the long lost son talk with me and I want to get it over with."_

--

_"John! You can't keep riding him like this!" Liz threw a glass at her boyfriend's father's head.__ It shattered on the edge of the overhang on the porch._

_"Watch it." He turned. He didn't yell but his tone was unmistakable. His boots crunched on the broken glass. "Until you, my son was just fine doing his job."_

_"Until me, he didn't know the difference between living his life and working the job."_

_"You're just a girl. You don't think he's got them all over?"__ He smirked at the look on her face and crossed the lot to where his son had parked the car._

_She stilled. She knew about Dean's sordid past with women. "This is different."_

_"Tell yourself that."_

_"I'm pregnant, John. You gonna take my baby's father away? For what? A demon that you can't beat?" She crossed the lot to stand up next to him. "I know what Dean is. I've never had any illusions about us but you're going to take him away from what he could have… because why? Because you can't let him go? You can't let him make his own decisions?"_

_"Dean doesn't do anything that he doesn't want to do."_

_"Unless you order it done." She countered. "You know it's true. If you __ordered__ him __to__ never see me again, he'd walk. He loves you more than anything in this world and… it shouldn't be a bad thing except that he puts your love above everything else in this world. Above his own needs… Let him go."_

_"Hey… what's going on?" Dean strolled into the lot, slowly. He had clearly just missed something._

_"Mount up. We've got a job to do." John ordered his son without taking his eyes off the slight girl in front of him._

_"Dad?" He blinked at his father then looked to his girlfriend. "Liz?"_

_"You don't bring him back so I can tell him myself… and I will light you up." Liz turned to face Dean. "You call me when the job is done."_

_"What the hell?" Dean's eyes whipped from her to his father.__ Then she had stormed back to her apartment over the store where she worked.__ Arms raised, he shook his head at the night. __He finally gave up and started for the Impala__'s driver's side__. His father rested his hands, clasped, on the roof of the car. "Sir?"_

_"__Hey, __Deano… um…"_

_"Deano? You haven't called me that since…" He trailed off, laughter dying as soon as it had started._

_"You would tell me if you couldn't do the job anymore, right?"_

_"Why couldn't I do the job?" His back stiffened as he searched his memory for any reason his father might think he couldn't do the job._

_"If you didn't want this life…"_

_"Dad? What's going on?"_

_"Maybe you sit this one out, huh? I'll call Jefferson to meet me." John pushed away from the car._

_"Dad! Come on. Let's go. You've been hounding me since this morning about this job." Dean rounded the car to catch up with his father._

_"Maybe Sam had the right idea." John admitted to his eldest son. "Maybe expecting the two of you to just… fall in was too much. I… I got to live my life. School, jobs, wife and kids… you two…"_

_"Dad…" Dean's voice cracked. He'd never seen his father like this._

_"You stay. I'll call Jefferson. I'll talk to you when I get the job done. You give me your answer then."_

_"What answer?" Dean watched helplessly as his father walked away. "What the fuck is going on?"_

--

_Dean tossed back the shot. His father was stewed right next to him. Sammy… his ashes were blowing in the wind but they had stopped it. It was over. They could move on. How they were supposed to do that without Sammy… Damn, the kid was only 17._

_"Give me a beer and… a shot of something to knock me on my ass." A female voice spoke to his left. Dean didn't look up when he felt her eyes on him. "Dude, you look like I feel."_

_"Not interested." Dean bit out._

_"Someone kill your puppy?"_

_That time, Dean did look. She looked like shit. "Someone kill yours?"_

_"Yeah." She took her shot and threw it down. Signaling for one more, she knocked that one back before gulping half her beer in long swallows. "I'm Liz."_

_"Dean. My dad." Dean gestured over his shoulder at his father, who was staring down the bar unsuccessfully. Damn bar kept winning. "John, on a good day."_

_"Shit… HE looks how I feel."_

_"Passing through?"_

_"You offering a ride? Cause I can't drive anymore." She waved her beer at him before finishing it off._

_"How old're you?"_

_"Old enough."_

_"Liar." Dean sniffed into his beer._

_"My… boyfriend died." Liz shifted her backpack on her left shoulder. "Dropped out of school. I have freaky dreams."_

_"My brother died… he was supposed to graduate in a month." He exhaled into his glass a moment before tossing it back. "You got a place to stay?"_

_"Not so much."_

_"Come on. Help me get him to the room and you've earned your right to a bed, tonight."_

_"I don't do tag team."_

_"Sugar… I couldn't get it up right now, if I tried." Dean shoved himself to his feet and gripped his father under the arms. "Let's go, old man."_

_John almost did a slump to the ground when his feet hit, Dean slipped an arm over his shoulder. Then Liz slipped under the other. Together, the three of them walked down the street to the run down motel where Dean was fairly certain they still had a room. He let them in and set about getting his dad settled. Yanking off his boots and getting his jacket off. Grabbing the trashcan, he set it beside the bed and hoped his father would remain on his belly for the remainder of the night._

_When Dean sat on the other bed, he felt her tense up. After a long moment, his eyes fell on her fidgeting hands on the hem of her blouse. Her mouth found his but… he really didn't feel like it. When he pulled away, her voice wavered. "I've never done this before. He died before… we could—"_

_"Hey, seriously… I don't care." Dean pushed her hands away. "Get some sleep. I promised you a bed and… I meant it. I'm not gonna sleep… so… you take the bed."_

_"Can you give me a ride to the next town?"_

_"Sure, get some sleep." Dean tucked her in, the way he had done with Sammy all those years living in shit motels. He took his watch at the little table. Watched age and grief drift away from their faces in sleep. Hard sleep. He wished he could sleep._

--

_Max stroked her face. "He's okay."_

_"Are you sure?"_

_"Yes, Isabel's sitting with him right now… He's scared of you."_

_"Why?"_

_"Because you had a fight."_

_"He's my son, too, Max."_

_"I know. I know… just… go easy on him. It was just a car accident."_

_"I just want to see if he's okay."_

_"He is. I'll get Marty to put the fear of God in him later."_

_"He's 15, Max. He's not supposed to be stealing cars and wrapping them around poles."_

_"I know. I'm going to have a talk with him later but today… today, just."_

_"Okay. I'm ready."_

--

_"You're not happy!" Dean exclaimed at her. "I don't make you happy. I don't know how!"_

_"If you want to leave, then leave!"_

_"Don't blame this on me! I'm trying but I am not cut out for picket fences and a two car garage. You knew that from the beginning. I'm not Max."_

_"Shut the hell up.__ Don't drag him into this.__"_

_"Right, like I'm the only one in this freaky ass relationship with issues."__ He muttered about her ex-husband._

_"Just leave, Dean." Liz sank down next to the crib.__ "It's what you're good at!"_

_"Fine." He grabbed his gun and his jacket. "Fine."_

_--_

_Max peered into the glass at his son. His mind raced with names. He couldn't decide on one. He needed to. He was convinced that if he gave their son a name, and he told it to Liz… that she would pull through._

_"That your boy?"_

_"Yeah."_

_"I remember doing this once."_

_Max turned to the voice. A grizzled man in his fifties. "Grandkid in there?"_

_"Nah… not yet. Maybe someday." The man shrugged, his arm in a sling. "My son's up in the ICU… got him on a machine… I just… needed a break. Got another son running around here, somewhere."_

_"Sorry to hear that." Max nodded, his gaze turning back to his son. "My wife is in surgery. Complications. I haven't named him yet."_

_"Pick a strong name."_

_"I'm Max." He held out his hand._

_"John." The stranger took his hand in a firm grip._

_"Dad. There you are." A tall lanky figure rounded the corner. "They said they're moving Dean to his own room, now."_

_"My younger boy, Sam." John nodded to the man who had just joined them._

_Max shook his hand. "Nice to meet you."_

_"Come on. Let's go." Sam took his hand back._

_"Just a minute." John held his hand up. "Look, I can't say whether she'll live or die… but… listen for her in your head… you'll pick the right name." He stared at the young man, long and hard. He was no older than Sam. Dean was 27 and he wasn't married or having kids. Dean was fighting for his life. "Just… try to do right by the boy. It's all you can do."_

_"Yeah, thanks." Max nodded. He watched his sleeping boy. "Dean, huh. Good strong name. Liz might like that."_

_Sam suddenly got what he'd walked into. He calmed and let his father finish what had been started. John looked to his son. "What do you think? We go back to Dean with a story that some kid got named after him and he'll wake up?"_

_"He is a little vain." Sam scratched at the back of his neck._

_"He names the boy Dean, then we tell our Dean… he wakes up, then we send him in to talk to the mom…" John teased._

_"Who knows, he could sweet talk her into waking up, too." Sam finished._

_Max let himself laugh a little. "Hope Dean wakes up."_

_"Hope your girl pulls through." John patted him on the back and climbed back into his wheelchair for the ride back to his older son._

_--_

_"Johnny is sick." Liz sniffled into the phone. "We admitted him to the hospital in Baxter for observation."_

_"Is he gonna be okay?" Dean sat down, his knees weak._

_"I don't know."_

_"I'm coming." He hung up the phone, then took a minute to get his bearings. He looked to his brother. "You kill this son of a bitch then you get your ass to Baxter."_

_"Dean?"_

_"Just do it. I need to go."_

TBC


	63. Chapter 62

Part 62 – Two days later…  
(April 25, 2011)

Liz finished reading through her handwriting. It was hers and not John's. She had spent a day writing and then another day sleeping. There were so many visions of things that had never happened and would never happen but they were in her head and touching Adam had released them.

He had it inside him. Somehow, somewhere, Adam was truly his parents' son. Antarian energy ran through those bones, in his veins. So, she was not totally surprised to find him hovering on the other side of the table. He picked up a notebook and scanned through the information. "You really saw this stuff when you touched me?" She nodded. "Anything about me?"

"Some." She flipped through a few pages and motioned him to her side of the table. "I want you to keep in mind that I've read through all this and none of this has come to pass, nor will it ever.

"Then why did you see them?"

"I don't know yet." She opened the notebook to a page where she and Max had raised Adam together. "I only wrote down what I saw but there was so much more that I felt about each vision. In this one… you had just turned 15. You and I had a fight… you stole a car and tried to run away. You had an accident and were afraid of what I was going to do when I found out."

"What did you do?"

"Hugged you. I was so glad that you were okay."

"You don't even know me."

"No, I don't. Not in this world."

"So, this didn't happen, why?" Adam turned his eyes over and over the scene but he didn't even have a tingle of anything.

"Different circumstances. Max and I never met any of the Winchesters, we never found out about the demons and Kivar never came to Earth."

"You didn't have your own children…" Adam frowned as he realized that he was the only child mentioned.

"You're right."

He flipped the page and read it. "In this one… you're a doctor and you have six kids… and I'm just one of them."

"Yeah." He flipped another page and his eyes widened. Liz ripped the notebook out of his hands to see what he'd read. "Yes, Dean's a potty mouth… and if I ever meet this Carmen person, I'm going to have to rip her hair out."

"Nice." Dean nodded from across the room, then he tipped his head back to glance at them over his shoulder. "I think I like you jealous."

"Shut up." Liz glared at him.

"You think I'm sexy, you want my body." Dean sang as he flipped through the six channels they had.

"Well, it is all you're good for." She raised an eyebrow at him and crossed her arms. It took a moment for her words to sink in.

"Hey! I'm useful." He rose and tossed the remote aside. "I am a breadwinner. I am a demon hunter. I… am a wonderful father." He stalked over to her. "I am loving and caring, damn it."

Liz tilted her head back to look at him. "Don't forget pretty. You're pretty, too."

Yanking her up by her waist, he pulled her against his body. "What was that?"

"You're pretty." She felt her knees weaken when he nuzzled her neck.

"Pretty… I'm not sure I like that word."

"Beautiful?" She hung from his neck.

"Try again."

"Striking."

"I can deal with striking." He cocked an eyebrow. "Maybe."

"What do you want from me?"

"Pretty is not an adjective for men."

"I am so sorry, Mr. Macho. Ruggedly handsome, then."

"Damn straight."

"There's a child in the room." Adam called out as he wandered across the apartment with the notebook, eyes glued to the script scrawled on those pages.

"Yeah, Dean. There's a child in the room and you're being inappropriate." Liz cleared her throat.

"Kid's gotta learn somehow." Dean licked his lips and straightened up but didn't release her.

Adam stopped and turned to face them. "My dad used to say that. When he was getting gross with my mom."

That sobered them a bit. He looked like he might cry but he took a deep breath and rubbed at his eyes. Dean set Liz back on her feet and motioned for Adam to follow him. "Hey, come on. Let's go see if Bobby needs help with Max."

--

Kyle sat down at the bar and watched Liz organize the bottles so that she could reach them all without a step stool. Then he took note of two shotguns hanging over the bar. "Nervous?"

"A little but Missouri is still working some mojo. Or hoodoo… I forget which is the correct term." She sighed and sank down on the stool she had used while she was pregnant.

"You think it's going to keep you safe?"

"I hope it does." She nodded. "In a few days, it's going to be my home, too."

"I hope you don't feel that we bullied you into taking Adam."

"A little."

"I wouldn't have insisted if I didn't honestly think you were the best person to take him in." Kyle leaned on the bar to make sure she was listening to him. "I'm going to help. He's Max's kid… so he's family."

"Yeah." Liz nodded and laid a hand on his arm. "Thank you, Kyle."

"You know… when I told you to complicate your life a little… I meant 'a little' and not…" He motioned around him.

"Some of it could not be helped."

"Some of it, sure… but this invention of a latex penile sleeve to prevent conception… it's been around a while."

"Maria gave me that talk." Liz admitted. "But… I could not imagine not having Johnny."

"He is pretty cute." He took a breath. "You know… Michael raked me over the coals for not preventing you from getting involved with Dean. They're okay right now but Michael was pissed."

Liz nodded, silently. They were prevented from further speech by the arrival of the Ramirezes with two screaming babies and the Guerins. Michael had the same scowl he'd been sporting since setting foot in Valor Springs again. It was odd to see the gang gathering at the bar after so long. Two and a half years after Max's sacrifice and life had changed; made abundantly clear when the Winchester men walked in with Adam in tow. Adam was excitedly throwing mock punches at Sam, daring him to fight back.

"Dude, he's twice your size." Dean snorted, holding John against his chest. The baby happily sucked on his fist. "Sam eats burgers bigger than you."

Liz watched Adam gravitate to Jesse, who absently laid a hand on his shoulder while nodding to Maria and keeping up with the conversation. Babies got passed around for hugs and pinches. Kyle nudged Liz and flicked his head to Jesse. "Guess he's the favorite uncle already. So not fair."

"Hey… Adam?" Liz called out. "There are three rooms on the right… upstairs. Maybe you go pick one out."

"Ours is the second one on the left." Dean told the boy as he took his son back from the pinchers. He slid onto a stool next to his wife. When Adam had dragged Jesse up the stairs to pick out his room, Dean cleared his throat. "He saw me and Sam sparring… he wants to learn, now."

"You do the physical training. I'll do the mental training." Kyle nodded. His gaze flicked to Liz. "You can do the coddling thing."

"He's a child… not a science experiment." Liz cut in.

"He feels like one." Kyle's eyes slid to the side. "I… uh… can feel him pretty strongly. I thought I was pretty… naturally empathic and… being around that kid is like being jacked into an antenna."

"Yeah." Liz nodded. It was a pretty good metaphor for what she'd done when she'd touched him. All these doors in her head that had been cracked just enough to make their presence known had been blown wide open when she'd touched that kid.

"Isabel asked yet?"

"No, but she's going to and I… it's hard to wrap my mind around it."

"What? The whole… 'my first husband's spirit is saving my ass from demons' or something?" Dean cut in.

"You have such a way with words." Liz rolled her eyes at him. "But yes."

"You going to number them?" Kyle teased. "'This is my first husband. And this is my second husband… both dead. This is my current husband… he's not an alien or a demon hunter… but he has a kind heart.'"

"Shut up. Only we get to joke about that." Liz motioned to herself and her current husband. "It's not funny, even then."

--

Isabel stared at the wall of photographs. The smile on her brother's face made her own face split. Max laughing with someone who wasn't in on the secret. Having fun like a normal person. To think that it would be three years in the fall… Wiping at her eyes she shifted her gaze to pictures of young Marty and the stories behind those pictures that she would never hear. She felt Liz stand next to her. "A lot has happened in so short a time. Kivar's gone. Max is gone. Marty is gone. Adam is here. You're remarried and we've both got kids… Michael is married."

"Kyle's in love." Liz nodded, casting her friend a glance over her shoulder. Betty Lou kept close to Kyle, as if the others had come to take him away.

"When does this crash course begin?" Isabel turned to gaze around the room.

"When Missouri gets back." Liz nodded. "She's the expert. She went to get some supplies."

"Liz… was it really Max?"

"Yeah." She nodded. "I wasn't sure at first… but he touched me and… helped me heal Dean." She let out a nervous laugh. "I had the strangest urge to say 'awkward' while he was in the room. It was him. I could… almost smell him. There was so much ozone in the air that it smelled like rain for a week."

"Where do you think he is?"

"He's not in hell."

"But not in heaven? Why?"

"I wish I knew. He's not haunting anyone that we can tell. I don't know if it's his consciousness or his soul but it's… between the worlds, I think." Liz turned back to the wall to gaze at Max's face.

"How… um…"

"Apparently Dean was ordered to take care of me. I don't know if Max approves but he didn't turn into a poltergeist and come throw stuff at Dean. Apparently disgruntled spirits can do that." She cast a glance over to her husband and wondered what was going to happen in the next few months. If he would develop any alien powers or if their son was in danger. Could they keep both John and Adam safe?

"Are you okay?" Isabel asked softly.

"Yeah. I'm okay. A little freaked out by the whole thing but… I think we'll be fine. Missouri's fixed up the bar and it should be safe enough… Extra protection upstairs." Liz pointed to the doors and windows. "Dean's devised these little lips for the windows and little troughs for the door. We've just got to remember to keep up the salt."

"How weird was it? I mean… It's Max."

Liz stared at her (former)sister-in-law for a long time before she answered. "Max was the love of my life but he's dead. Coming to terms with that was hard. You know how hard it was… It's not that I don't love him anymore. I mean… You know what I mean, Isabel."

"Yeah." Isabel nodded. "I know."

"I'm freaked out. Everything is so… precarious right now. I go out of my way not to pick a fight with Dean. I… we fought so much because… our priorities were different. They're not that different anymore but… I love him and I don't want to lose him. Every step has been some kind of battle and I'm tired of it. I want it done. I want demons gone and aliens…" Liz wiped at her eyes. "It killed me to see Max. It did because it means that he's not at rest and after everything… he should be. He shouldn't still be struggling and fighting this battle with us. We should be able to take care of it without him."

"That's what we're doing now." Isabel tried to reassure her.

"God, and when we fight… I say the most awful things to him and I can't do that. I can't cause what if he gets called on a hunt and I never see him again."

"Liz, calm down." Isabel put her hands on her shoulders. "That's why we're here… to learn to take care of ourselves."

The door swung open, admitting Missouri. "Look at all these people. Well, at least we'll only have to go over it once."

--

"Why don't you help your wife cook?" Missouri smacked Dean with a dishcloth.

"Hey!" Dean cracked his neck and gestured with the baby in his arms. "I have my duties. She cooks and I feed him."

"He takes out the garbage and gives him a bath." Adam offered from where he was examining a pre-test for his new school.

"Do you like broccoli, Adam?" Liz glanced over from her small stove. She already missed the bigger one from her cottage.

"I guess. Mom always made me eat it." The boy shrugged.

"Where's Sam?" Missouri glanced around, the answer popping to the fore of two minds and giving her the answer before either Dean or Liz could open their mouths. "He's with her. I see."

"She seems nice. Drives Sam's nuts and anyone who can do that is cool in my book." Dean adjusted the bottle as John became overly interested in other people in the room.

"Dean, get a spit cloth before you burp him." Liz cautioned as she began finalizing the meal's preparation.

"He's not going to spit up. Little guy has been holding his meals for three weeks now."

"That's your favorite shirt. Keep that in mind before you make a decision on a spit cloth." She cautioned as she began dishing up plates.

Dean opened his mouth to say something but Missouri was already putting a spit cloth on his shoulder. Sure enough, midway through his burping process, John sent a load of sour-smelling yuck onto his shoulder and had the nerve to grin about it. Dean just shook his head at the women on the other side of his table and set John bouncing on his thigh as he started his dinner.

Sam walked in and sat down as if he wasn't late for dinner and he didn't have his hair sticking up at odd angles on his head. Liz raised an eyebrow and flicked her gaze to Dean, who took a sip of his beer and seemed almost to be proud of his brother. Missouri, on the other hand, had no intention of ignoring Sam's appearance or tardiness. "Boy, is your watch broken?"

"I got stuck in traffic."

"I know where you got stuck and it wasn't in traffic." Missouri hit Dean with her dishtowel before the smirk could fully settle.

"I was on time!" Dean frowned and adjusted John's position on his thigh. "Hit him."

"I can't help it that my girlfriend lives a two hour drive away." Sam tucked into his meal. "And for the last time, Serena is a nice person."

TBC


	64. Chapter 63

Part 63 – Two days later…  
(April 27, 2011)

Michael sat next to Liz but didn't say anything. She was too busy going over her budget and examining her inventory. His crate was uncomfortable but he didn't say anything. Liz finally set her books down to look at him. "How's married life treating you?"

"Maria's harping on me to get a better job. You know. Same old." He shrugged and leaned back against the wall.

"Did you guys move into that duplex the way you were talking about before Christmas?"

"Yeah…" He nodded slowly. "That… uh… time you were in the hospital with the baby. Maria… she thought she might be pregnant. She didn't say anything to your folks or to you because…" He scratched at his eyebrow and finally just let his hands drop to his thighs. "If John died and she was pregnant… she didn't want you to be upset."

"Okay…"

"She ended up not being pregnant… and I…" Liz watched Michael as he struggled for his words; for his lies and half-truths. "We're not ready for kids. My job sucks and your parents can't afford to pay Maria more. We don't even have our own house. It's half a house and I swear to… you know, whoever, that I'm not raising a kid in a trailer park."

"You wanted Isabel to ask you to take Adam."

"Maybe."

"Why didn't you say something?"

"I don't know. I know that I'm no good with kids. Isabel's kids always bite me when I hold them. Your kid threw up on me this morning." Michael shrugged. "Adam would probably hate me. It would figure. Max and I were always fighting."

"Max loved you and you know it. You were his brother." Liz shook her head at him.

"Adam's already got a favorite uncle and I just… kind of figured that Max's kid… you know… I would get some props, you know?"

"So, you're jealous of Jesse?"

"If you tell anyone I said that…"

"You didn't say that."

"That's right." Michael finally cracked a smile. "Dean's not so bad, I guess."

"He thinks Metallica sold out on Load."

"But we agree that St. Anger rocks." Liz joined him in a laugh. It was ridiculous. Liz barely even liked Metallica. She was just used to it. Michael caught her up on some Roswell gossip. Liz caught him up on Valor Springs gossip. He cleared his throat. "So that Missouri woman… she's okay."

"Yeah."

"She kind of freaks me out. She just stares at me." He fell silent for a moment. "I miss Max. Maria yells at me because I don't talk about him. Sometimes I feel like someone cut my arm off and even though I know it's not there… I keep… reaching with it." He took a deep breath. "I kind of feel like Maria doesn't understand and it makes her mad but… there was just a few other people like me in this world… and two of them are dead. Rath… I hope he's dead. That would make me and Adam the only male aliens left. Little Alex is only half. Who knows what Johnny's got up his sleeve?"

"Michael…" Liz whispered and didn't quite know how to bring it up. "Dean… he's been healed. I don't know how close to dead he was going to be. I didn't have time to… Max and I healed Dean… before we shot… Do you think he'll become like me and Kyle?"

Michael sat up and leaned on his knees. "You know… when Max died… I kind of steeled myself for becoming an asshole again. It didn't happen. Something is going on. Something alien and I don't know what it is. I can't put my finger on it. Valenti is getting a little empathic. I don't think he's noticed. If there is something alien going on… we need a leader and… you and I know that I suck at that. Dean is good at that kind of thing… so if he… shows signs of being juiced… then maybe it's not a bad thing."

Liz could feel herself sinking in on herself. Putting more pressure on Dean… seemed so unfair. After all he'd been through, after all that he fought for, to put him at the head of a potential alien army. Then she snorted. She clapped her hands over her face.

"What?"

"No… it's…" Liz lowered her voice. "It just hit me. Sam's got… some demon blood apparently. It's barely active and he's trying to keep it that way. Now… Dean may or may not have some alien juice?"

Michael shook his head and let out a laugh. "Okay, yeah. That's kind of funny."

"Don't tell him though. He's already on edge with everyone being here."

"Remember when Kyle found out he was the reason we kept thinking we were being followed down that trail?" Michael let out a laugh. "That was great."

"Yeah, funny for you. I'm the one he decided to have his little rant with. Two hours of him freaking out and having all my pencils rolling away from me." Liz did laugh because Kyle's magnetism had shown up at a later date and that rant had included a bizarre hula dance with a steak knife and a crowbar.

--

Dean leaned over Adam's shoulder. "Good hand."

"My dad says that every rule you need to know about poker, you can learn from The Gambler." Adam frowned and cleared his throat. "He said. Said."

"My dad said that every rule about poker comes down to a man's face." Dean winked at him. "Learn to bluff with your face, not your words."

"No gambling." Isabel reached over and plucked the cards from Adam's hand.

"He's got to learn." Bobby interrupted. "He's going to live above a bar and there's going to be quite a few games this fall. Abel owes me a game."

"Yeah, Aunt Isabel. I have to learn to bluff." Adam whined but let her leave a lipstick smear on his forehead.

"Well, let's see what these guys have got." Jesse took a seat and waited to be dealt in.

"I don't play poker with lawyers." Dean cleared his throat, setting his cards aside.

"Well, I don't play poker with Liz." Jesse cast the woman a look from where she was going over the new schedules with her staff.

"Well, that's good enough for me." Dean picked up his cards again.

"He kicked her ass." Kyle told Jesse as he sat down to join them.

"Oh come on… it was pretty close."

"No, it wasn't." Kyle shook his head.

"So maybe we don't play for cash." Jesse cleared his throat. "Ever beat Max?"

"We didn't ever play." Dean shook his head, his mood sobering. "Liz never let him."

"Maybe you clobbered Liz on a good night but Max would cream me every time." Jesse snorted as he recalled the strained relationship he'd had with the man before they had all scattered on the run.

"Cause he cheated." Adam piped up and instantly quieted.

"What's that?" Kyle tilted his head at the boy, his instincts priming themselves and feeling the confusion and awkwardness surrounding the boy.

"He used to cheat."

"Really?" Dean arched an eyebrow. "How'd he do that?"

"Changed the cards."

"Mother—" Jesse cut himself off. He knew, now, that Max could change the appearance of things. "You mean all that time?"

"Well, it makes sense." Kyle nodded. "I always knew Saint Max got his kicks in sick, demented ways."

"Yeah, well… guy like that… entitled to his own twisted fun." Dean cleared his throat and folded his cards. "I got diaper duty."

Adam stared after Dean for a long moment. Bobby cleared his throat. "Don't mind his moods, kid. They aren't about you." He took the deck of cards from Kyle. "Come here. Let me teach you the winning hands. You can worry about The Gambler stuff after you learned which hand beats what."

Isabel wandered back over, sitting next to Adam, to watch the boy learn the rules. She watched his face in awe as pieces of her brother drifted across his face and just a hint of annoyance when she saw Tess in him as well. Ruffling his hair, she left another lipstick smear on his face. She rested her hand on his opposite shoulder and her head on his. He didn't shake her off. Progress. She watched Dean change John's diaper with an expert ease that even Jesse hadn't developed through two babies. Watched his easy grin as he picked up John to stand on the bar. The little feet only held purchase for two or three seconds at a time but if his grin was anything to judge by, both father and son were having a good time. Liz climbed onto a stool to kiss Dean over the bar. They seemed to have a brief serious discussion and then suddenly Liz was laughing and swatting him over the bar. She tried to take John from Dean but he gathered the baby into his arms and backed away.

Missouri finally intervened and made off with the baby. After a moment of staring at each other, they settled onto bar stools, side by side. They didn't talk for the longest time. Just seemed to enjoy the other's company for however long they had the quiet. Like best friends. Isabel stared and stared and that's when she got it. The things that Dean and Liz had in common where not things that could be easily measured. It came in character and strength and priorities. It wasn't about sharing favorite songs or foods or hobbies, it was about sharing the sacrifice. Building a life from the shreds of the one they had known before.

Isabel tore her eyes away when their eyes hooded. Private conversations didn't need voyeurs hanging around. Adam set his hand down. "Full House."

"Yep, that it is." Bobby nodded and glanced at his cards one last time. "Good job, kid."

--

Liz watched Missouri pace the kitchen with John before taking the seat next to Dean at the bar. An easy quiet fell over them. Easier than in the past. No fidgeting or staring only when the other wasn't looking. Quiet time. Adult time. God, it had been forever since they'd had some quality adult time. She slid her eyes over to him. He was watching her the same way. Through his eyelashes at her, the corner of his mouth twitching upward.

Her hand found his, squeezing lightly and never disengaging. His fingers tightened on hers, keeping them joined against his thigh. Their hands inched their way over the top of his thigh. Her eyes dared him to take it too far. His eyes dared her to yank her hand away. Arching her eyebrow, she flexed her index finger against his inseam.

"Behave, children. Now's not the time to be making more babies." Missouri cautioned as she walked up behind them, causing Liz to collapse against Dean's shoulder in a fit of giggles. Dean glared at the psychic, shaking his head. "Use rubbers and common sense."

John began fussing in her arms and no amount of pacing, soothing words or rocking would calm him. Dean stepped in and took the cranky boy into his arms. "It's naptime."

Dean paced with John as he finally calmed down. Missouri took his seat next to Liz. "That song. Dean's remembered it after all these years. His momma taught him that song. It's the only part of her that he's got left."

"And those eyes and those freckles." Liz added.

"He's still got those pictures, good." Missouri nodded. "I don't suppose there are wedding pictures."

"Um, yeah." Liz nodded. "Upstairs. We'll get them down and send Sam out to make some copies."

"Tell me the truth about that floozy." Missouri narrowed her eyes.

Liz arched an eyebrow at Missouri. "All I know is that she tried to pick up Dean a few nights before John was born. Dean introduced them at the hospital and they've been attached at the hip ever since. She's been good for him." She cleared her throat meaningfully. "I'm not her biggest fan but… Sam's happiness is worth more than my jealousy. The demon's taken two of his girlfriends. Dean says he's never seen Sam like this. I want him to be able to keep it for as long as he's able."

--

Isabel tutored Adam in the ways of fitting in; the ways of acting normal when normal was anything but. How to fit in where people knew everyone and distrusted outsiders. She sat on his bed with him and stroked his hair. "I want you to listen to Dean and Liz. Help out. You can call whenever you feel like it."

"What if I don't want to stay here?"

"I know… it sucks. I suck for leaving you here but it's safer for you."

"What if they hate me?"

"They couldn't hate you."

"Dean's okay I guess but… what about her?"

"She can't hate you. She's not capable of hate." She reassured him. "Tell you what. Tomorrow, I will take you to the school with Liz. We'll get you settled in and then we'll leave. Okay?"

"Do you have to leave?"

"Yeah. We do. Jesse and I will miss you."

Dean cleared his throat as he walked in. "Don't mind me… I'm just checking the windows."

"Liz already checked the salt." Adam stared up at Dean as the man traced symbols marked on the windows.

"Never hurts to double check." Dean unlocked and relocked the windows, examined the lines for breaks and opened the nightstand to make sure the silver butter knife was still there.

"He's safe here, right?" Isabel fidgeted as Dean's inspection took longer and longer.

"Oh yeah… just making sure. I was doing these checks in my sleep when I was seven… but alien boy here is new to the routine." Dean ruffled the boy's hair. "Mini-Max will get the hang of it soon enough."

"Don't call him that. He has a name."

"Yeah. My name is Adam." The boy scoffed and swiped a hand over his hair to fix the damage, only to make it worse.

"Reveille, bright and early. I'll do the manly advice thing at breakfast." Dean tapped the doorframe as he left.

"Check on the baby." Liz called after him before entering Adam's room. "Settled?"

"Yeah, I think so." Isabel nodded. "First night in the room."

"I'm fine, Aunt Isabel."

Isabel blinked back the wetness. "He sounds like Max when he whines like that."

Liz only nodded to herself. She didn't know Max when he was nine. She had to admit that Adam had genetically inherited a lot of Max's mannerisms. "Night, Adam."

"Yeah, get some rest, sweetie. We'll see you in the morning." Isabel kissed his forehead as she rose. The two women left the door cracked before heading downstairs. They settled around the table in the kitchen where Jesse was trying to keep both babies quiet and Sam was polishing off his dinner. "So… I looked up some tutors and a piano instructor…"

"You're going to turn him into a geek." Dean proclaimed as he joined them, fiddling with a baby monitor.

"I don't want him to stand out too much at school."

"That's not the way to do it." He shook his head.

"Cause your way is so much better." Sam mumbled around a mouthful of food.

"I've had experience." Dean cleared his throat.

"Yeah… I'll bet the same approach flies in prison, too."

"So what if it does?"

"And that doesn't bother you?"

"Sam, finish your dinner and rinse your plate." Liz cut in.

"What's Dean's first day of school plan? Find the bully and beat him up?" Isabel gestured to the elder Winchester.

"Pretty much." Sam nodded.

"What Sam doesn't know is how I found the bully. He was usually the guy who decided to pick on Sam within an hour of starting school." Dean shrugged and Sam just stared at his brother through the revelation. "After that… school was a breeze."

"You went around beating up my bullies for me?" The younger Winchester frowned.

"Well, Mr. Pacifist, talking to bullies never actually works in practice."

"You are not to instruct my nephew to get into fights." Isabel pointed a finger at Dean.

--

Dean didn't like it. He was too far from everything. He actually preferred the tiny cottage with no separating walls and no stairs and no privacy and a shower that could pass muster on the space shuttle. He missed just crossing the room to look at his boy. The crackling of the baby monitor with John's breathing was little comfort. He felt Liz shift beside him. There was an upside. He could shut the door and fuck his wife if he wanted to; his wife who was talking forever to come to bed.

Taking her sweet time to put on lotion and to comb her hair and wearing some… really hot nightgown that he had never seen before. It all smacked of conspiracy… not that he would mind… if the whole of the apartment weren't a strategic nightmare. "Since when do you wear nightgowns to bed?"

She peered over her shoulder at him. "Since we added a number to the household and my walking around in a towel or one of your shirts is no longer acceptable."

"I think we need to discuss this new dress code." He reached over to drag her to him. "It was not run by me before all these changes were put into effect."

"Are you trying to appeal the dress code?"

"Yes, I am. I'm bringing the matter back to the table because…" he rolled on top of her and nudged the gown upward. "I'm not sure I like this new clothes-to-bed clause." He used his nose to nudge aside the scooped neckline for better access to her skin. "All these new obstacles to learn."

"Can't have you all complacent on me." Her teeth caught her bottom lip in her mouth as his mouth opened over her skin. Everything was moving along just as planned until an unfamiliar creak met her ears.

"Dean? Liz?"

In the scare, Dean banged his head on the headboard and nearly racked himself on Liz's knee when she jerked and yanked the sheets up. Rubbing his goose egg, Dean composed himself. "What's up, Adam?"

"Um…"

In the last week or so, Dean had never seen the boy at a loss for words before. It was obvious that the boy was scared but he refused to talk about it. "Let's go check the lines in your room, again, huh?"

Liz took a moment to compose herself, fix her nightgown and then followed the short trip down the hall. She stayed in the doorway as they worked side by side to make sure that every line Dean had checked two hours before was still there. She watched Dean teach Adam how to draw a sigil on the window with holy water. Adam glanced up at Dean. "So, nothing's getting in?"

"Nope."

"All this stuff… keeps out the demons… but what about the aliens?" Adam stared at his wet hand and not knowing what else to do with the excess, wiped it in his hair.

"Well, we got the town pretty rigged. Kyle's always got an eye out and Liz… her visions come in handy. We hardly ever get jumped without some kind of notice." Dean motioned him back to the bed. "You hear anything weird, you call out for me, okay?"

"Okay."

"Everything okay in here?" Liz whispered.

"Fine, just reinforcing the perimeter. Can't be too careful." Dean winked at Adam.

"Right." Adam cleared his throat. "Nothing to see, here. Move it along." He climbed into bed and pulled the sheets up to his chin. "Can you close the door? I don't like open doors."

"Yeah, buddy." Dean made sure the closet door was shut and a working flashlight sat on the nightstand. "Get some sleep. School tomorrow. Bullies and chicks."

Liz let the door close with a click. The apartment was really dark. She would have to do something about that. She took one of Dean's hands in both of hers and pulled him back to their bedroom. "You're really good with him."

"He's a punk ass… reminds me of me."

She shoved his hands away when they tried to lift her gown over her stomach. She caught the light switch as they passed and tried to pull him down onto the bed but he was bound and determined to see the gown in a heap on the floor… with the lights on. "Dean, get the light."

"Mmm-mmm." He shook his head as he finally got the damned thing off. "Nope. Gotta see all this."

"You don't have to see the fat belly, turn off the light."

"Fat belly… this is not fat… this is… badge of honor. Sexy badge." His lips dragged across the flesh, not nearly the deformity she was making it out to be. "Trust me… Not really into chicks with guts but this… this has a story behind it. It's…" his mouth made its way up to her neck, teasing and taunting. "You were wearing the jeans, the low ones and the belly was… just over it and I wanted to…"

"Dean, you're not even making any sense." She gripped his chin to lift his eyes to hers.

"It's like… ownership. Proof of purchase. My baby used to be right here." He laid a palm flat against her stomach. "It's pretty hot."

"You're a dork… a chauvinistic dork at that."

"Oh… you're all… round and curvy like Ava Gardner…"

"Shut up."

"I'm serious. You have no idea how much you're turning me on." He grinned lasciviously as she continued to squirm in his grasp.

"I'm fat. It's not a turn on." She glared up at him.

"You act like you still have a watermelon front and center… this… is not that. Nope." He dipped his head down to stop her protest. "Liz. Shut up."

TBC


	65. Chapter 64

Part 64 – One week later…  
(May 4, 2011)

Adam studied the tool box then asked Bobby what each and every tool was for. Dean caught the swipe of a hand over the eyes. Bobby might gossip like an old woman but he kept his own secrets like Fort Knox. Singer and Sons had a ring to it and it just proclaimed Singer Salvage on the sign. Dean took a breath, then cleared his throat. "Annoying, ain't he."

"You can say that again. How many times do I have to tell you that I'm not a babysitter?" Bobby grumbled softly so Adam couldn't hear and be offended by the half-hearted complaint.

Dean resisted for all of five minutes. "Bobby… how old were your boys?"

"Pete was my youngest… he passed on when he was ten… He'd always been sick. South Dakota winters can be hard… My second wife and I… we didn't know what to do without him, so we split up."

"Your youngest?"

"David was 15… blamed himself for his mom and me splitting up. Truth was, we was never good together… Anyway, he ran off. Got himself possessed… Did some bad things. That's how I met Pastor Jim." Bobby shrugged. "I all but run your daddy off when he come around with you boys."

"What stopped you?" Dean watched Bobby's face carefully.

"You and that smart mouth." He snorted and reached for his flask. "Never seen a boy with a mouth like yours… calm a man like your daddy."

"Me? Not Sam?"

"Sammy was too quiet. Sure, he asked questions but left on his own, he was quiet. You were loud. Running all over everything and barking with the dogs. John called you out and it was like you died, it went that quiet." He shrugged and cleared his throat. "I'd've shot John inside the first ten minutes I met him but he went from an asshole to a father before my eyes when you came in to interrupt… asking for diapers or something."

Adam stared up at them. They had forgotten he was there. Bobby snorted and spat on the ground. "I'd never met a grown man with a 7 year old for a best friend. Ticked me off but you had earned it. You were the only counsel to ol' John's ear."

"Dad said as much to me once… I didn't believe him." Dean shoved his hands into his pocket.

"Yeah, well… think about the kind of friends he'd made…"

"Yeah…" Dean cleared his throat against a lump. "C'mon. Liz wants us washed up for dinner like a Stepford family."

Adam put the rest of the tools away and jumped to his feet. He kept glancing up at Dean during the short walk to the bar. "All these people… Your friends… They talk about your dad but what about your mom?"

"None of them ever met her. She died when I was little. When my dad was more of a stay in one place kind of guy."

"But you remember her?"

"Yeah… more now, actually than when I was growing up… as backward as that sounds."

"I remember my mom and dad but not my… real parents."

"Guess that's tough… not like you really could. Liz says you were nine months old or something."

"Aunt Isabel never told me what happened when they had me."

"When who had you?"

"Max."

"Ask Liz. She was there. She'd know."

"She's pretty nice." Adam furrowed his brow. "I don't know if I want to ask her questions about my biological parents though." He shrugged when Dean cut him a sideways glance. "I'd like to keep her nice."

--

Liz set an extra plate at the table, glaring at Sam all the while. "I don't mind."

"Are you sure?" He gripped a chair and followed her with his eyes as she moved around the little kitchen. "Because it kind of seems like you do."

"It's fine." Liz shook her head and went to retrieve her husband from the back room.

"Hey." Dean glanced up from his knife and whetting stone.

"Fuck me." She demanded.

"What?"

"Right now."

"Here?"

"Yes."

Dean flipped his whetting stone closed and nodded while he sheathed his knife. "Okay."

--

Dean sat at the table grinning, his hair standing on end. Sam rolled his eyes. "No tact."

"What?"

"Nothing. Never mind."

"I'm in a good mood."

"Yeah, we know."

"And I'm in a good mood… so we'll forgive him this once." Liz arrived and brushed her hair out of her face.

Adam rolled his eyes as he plopped down in his seat. "Yvette wants to know if I can play at her house tomorrow."

"Yvette, sure."

Adam glared. "Why can I go to her house but not Jerry's?

"Cause I don't know Jerry's parents."

"You've only known Yvette's for a week."

"Not true." Dean shook his head. "I've known them for years. Ask Yvette."

"What time is she getting here, Sam?" Liz cut in as she began placing serving dishes on the table.

"She'll be here soon, I swear." Sam jumped up from the table and ran outside to peer down the street. "She's never been to Valor Springs before."

"Calm down. Girls don't like desperate guys." Adam crossed his arms and looked to Dean, who nodded.

"You, stop taking advice from Dean." Liz tapped the boy's head.

"Hold on… the Baxter chick is coming to dinner?" Dean sat up straighter, beer tipped toward Sam.

"Your brother invited her." Liz set down another drinking glass.

"You said you were okay with it." Sam protested. "You've been my biggest cheerleader so far… what's with the 180?"

"I am not against you dating her. I love that fact that you're dating and it's getting more and more serious. I'm happy for you." Liz reiterated as she set the last of her dishes in place. "You tell me at the last moment and I'm just… a little thrown."

Dean caught Liz by the wrist. "What's she doing coming here?"

"Like I said, your brother invited her."

"In the back… was that about… cause I don't do… that anymore. I don't." He pulled her closer, lowering his voice.

"Just… making sure you can't." She kissed the top of his head and kept going.

"Can't?" He frowned after her.

"Hey, she's here…. Just… everyone… act normal." Sam waved his hands at them as he rushed out the door.

"Wow… I just had a flashback from his senior prom." Dean shuddered. "His date was this skinny girl… no curves to speak of… braces… nice eyes though." He nodded as he conjured up the image. "She had this LeBaron. Sweet ride. Only convertible I ever liked."

"Is that why you slashed her tires while we were at the dance?" Sam re-entered the room with his girlfriend by his side.

"I slashed her tires because her brother owed me money and he said that was his car." Dean pointed to his brother. "Braceface was a victim of her fink brother's lying ways."

"Whatever… Serena, you remember my brother, Dean… his wife, Liz." Sam cleared his throat. "John over there in the highchair… and this is Adam."

"Honorary Winchester." Adam waved from his seat.

"Hi." Serena waved as she took a seat where Sam indicated. "Thanks for having me over."

"Don't mention it, really." Liz cleared her throat and sent Sam a look. "Sam's going to have to buy that car if he borrows it from Bobby one more time."

"I've got summer break coming up. I'll be able to cross the distance more often in a few weeks."

"You're still in school?" Adam made a face at their dinner guest. "You're like… as old as Liz."

"Hey." Liz swatted him as she took her seat. "I am not old. Some people do go to school for a long time, young man. If you want to be a doctor, that's 12 years."

"Seriously?" Adam frowned as he weighed the new information. "I don't know if I want to be a doctor, then."

"What did your dad do?"

"He… sold insurance, I think. I don't want to do that either."

"I always wanted to be a fireman when I was growing up." Dean told him.

"There's that hero complex again." Sam passed plates and bowls.

"Dude… a little respect. I'm trying to steer my… wife's stepson in the direction of normal jobs."

"Fireman. The statistics—"

"Geekboy. Shut it. Firemen are widely respected. They do a community service. They put out fires, save lives and pull kittens from trees."

"You are aware that your track record classifies you as a pyromaniac, right?"

"I set fires to save lives and if I go down for that, then so do you."

"You guys set fires? For what…? Insurance money?" Serena froze with her hands reaching for a bowl of peas.

"Slash and burn… you know… for farmers." Liz supplied quickly. "Fertilization process."

"Oh… okay."

Sam took a deep breath and tried to center himself . "So much for normal, huh."

"Overrated." Liz winked at him.

Adam stared at her, head tilted. A flurry of information whirled inside his head, unfurling in its own sweet time. Before he could open his mouth, the conversation moved on. Adult topics of boringness. Nothing about aliens. Nothing about demons. College, work, the bar. While they were determined to put him to sleep, he built a tower out of his peas and mashed potatoes.

"Hey little dude, you okay?" Dean's voice broke through the haze. The boy just shrugged. "What's up?"

"Just thinking is all."

"Don't think too hard." Liz warned. "Dinner is not that challenging."

"Serena seems nice."

"Thank you." Serena smiled and squeezed Sam's arm.

"I don't know why Missouri doesn't like her." Adam shrugged though it wasn't as innocent a comment as he pretended.

"Who's Missouri?"

"Just a family friend." Sam shook his head but didn't miss the looks his brother and his wife exchanged. "I never actually found that out myself but something tells me that it's not a closely guarded secret if I asked the right person."

"Oh…" Serena cast her gaze to her plate. "Right."

"What?" Sam looked from his girlfriend to his brother to Liz and frowned when each took a drink to keep from being the one to answer.

--

Liz crossed her arms and stared out the big bar window and into the parking lot where Sam and Dean were hashing out their differences. Adam had taken up post at the bar with his homework. Serena had opted to stay behind and wait for the aftermath. Liz just hoped that John stayed down long enough to get this sorted out.

"You know, it's not like I was being picky that night. I was rebounding from a rebound and I hadn't even really planned it out in my head. I was just gonna go the next town over and bang the first guy I saw… that didn't work out. I had a couple of days to get my head on straight… and regardless of Sam's relation to your husband, I was really glad that I didn't do anything that night."

"Welcome aboard that relief train." Liz mumbled as she stared a bit harder through the window. "Dean and I were going through a really rough patch… it didn't help the situation but it clarified a few things for us."

"And what's that?"

"That we really want this to work."

--

"You just can't help yourself, can you?"

"I did not go home with her. How many times do I have to say it? It was a shitty thing to do, I admit that. I paid for that in more ways than you can imagine. Okay?" Dean threw his arms out.

"How could you think of doing that to Liz?"

"Look… I'm not going to give you a blow by blow on the worst part of my December. Okay? I was not in my right mind. I was stressed out, we'd just come off that stupid hunt and… things just hit rock bottom. I did not sleep with her. I went home to my wife and I stayed there."

"You couldn't tell me before? You had to wait until I'd fallen for her to reveal that she was gonna be another notch in your bedpost?"

"Dude, it was never about doing something to you. Okay? We recognized her at the hospital and I was just trying to paint her a big picture about the truth of the situation. I didn't figure on you falling for her. I didn't figure on it lasting forever. I was just trying to save my ass and my marriage. Okay?"

"What do I tell my kids? Oh, your mom is some chick your uncle picked up in a bar when he was thinking about being unfaithful to his wedding vows."

"Hey!" Dean shoved his little brother. "Look. Bad time. Bad choice. Outcome is I didn't do anything." He leaned against a sign post to look at his little brother. "I wasn't counting on the whole thing coming out like this. I just figured you'd get back in the saddle and do that thing you do where you avoid relationships because you… get scared for them." He shrugged. "Maybe I am a bad brother. Maybe I am a crappy husband. I'm a good father… or I try to be. I'm not harboring any lust for your girlfriend, Sammy. I have a wife and she makes damn sure I know where I'm sleeping at night, okay? I never thought I'd enjoy sleeping with the same woman every night. I'm not the person I used to be."

"You mean the person who made out with my prom date to apologize for slashing her tires?"

"I don't remember making out with her."

"How else did you know she wore braces?" Sam exclaimed.

"Braceface… she wore braces."

"She wore lingual braces, Dean, you couldn't see them by looking at her."

--

Adam waited until he was done with his homework. The bar was quiet. Liz and Serena were still camped out by the window. He took a deep breath and walked over. "Hey Liz?"

"Yeah?" She barely turned her head from where the noise had quieted somewhat.

"Think you could tell me about my mom and dad?" He suddenly felt so self-conscious asking her. "If… it's not too much trouble."

"Um…" Liz panicked but she had to get over it. That was all years ago. Two or three lifetimes ago, it seemed. "What do you want to know?"

"Can you tell me about… when I was with them?" He sniffed and stared at the floor for bit. "I mean, Aunt Isabel told me some of it but I think she was afraid to tell me all of it."

"Yeah, sure." Liz started to get up but he backed away. "What's wrong?"

"What's so great about normal?" He watched the blood drain from her face. "What you were saying earlier… made me think of that."

"It's something Max said to me once."

"Why?"

Liz led the boy to a booth where she could see the street and they could still have some privacy. She set the baby monitor on the table and let her mind access memories she'd put away years ago. "Because of what he was and what made us difference. Normal was never something that defined us."

"Tell me."

"I'll try to be as objective as I can… it's hard for me to talk about some of it."

--

Serena's car pulled out onto the road. Sam could feel the bitterness in his soul. He would deal with it, get over it… but not right now. There were other things going on. Liz was teary-eyed when they had gone back inside. Adam had been quiet and moody. Serena had ceased to make eye contact with anyone. To say their goodbye had been awkward would be the understatement of his lifetime.

He wandered around the bar for a long time. The old familiar faces were down to a handful. The kitchen was empty. Liz and the baby were upstairs, reading a story. Possibly something Shakespearian. Then he found Dean and Adam out back… training.

Sam watched his big brother. The same brother who had been his personal tormentor and an ever impatient teacher… patiently instructing his foster son in how to protect himself from a human attack.

Then he thought back. He'd been about 9 or 10 himself, obstinate, and his brother an angry teenager. Time and experience had changed them both. If he was honest with himself, most of those changes had been made in the last few years.

Adam struck as instructed and kept on going. Dean finally had to trap the boy's arms by his side. Dean held Adam against his chest and felt the pounding heart. He eventually felt hot tears on his bare arms. "Hey, hey. It's okay. It's okay. It's been a long night for everyone."

"It's not fair."

"No, it's not."

"I want my life back."

"I know." Dean rested his head on top of Adam's. "C'mon. Let's get to bed, start another day faster."

TBC


	66. Chapter 65

Just a note... There are no actual typos in this part. Every wrong note was hit on purpose cause... come on... sick Dean? Funny stuff.

Part 65 – Four weeks later…  
(June 1, 2011)

Dean woke up and couldn't lift his head. Could not do it to save his life. Breathing? He had obviously stopped doing that through his nose at some point in the night. He couldn't even taste the air he was sucking in. He sneezed and spewed all over his hands. "Gwoss."

"Here," a tissue was thrust into his hands, followed quickly by several others. For making such a mess, it had done nothing to clear out his nose. His blurry eyes picked out the brunette outline of his wife and his salvation. "Don't look at me like that. You're not dying."

"You sure?" That wet cough couldn't be good.

"It's a cold. You'll live." Her warm lips brushed his burning forehead. "I'll be back. Don't move."

"Where you goin'?"

"John's in his playpen. Do not pick him up. I'm going to walk Adam to Bobby's and tell Bobby that you're dying."

"Thought you said I wasn't."

"You're not, but you're acting like it and I'll take the opportunity to bitch about it." Her hand stroked his face. "Gonna stop by the store for some Nyquil… you… just stay warm and don't pick up the baby."

Dean lay still for all of ten minutes, then he kicked off the covers. It was frickin' June. Stupid flat tires and sudden showers. He plucked more Kleenex from the box to make an attempt at clearing the nasal passages… didn't help. Johnny chattered to himself and some toys in the play pen. Bleary eyes focused on that sight even as his eyelids threatened to close on him.

"This is pretty funny." Sam spoke up from the doorway.

"Shuddup." Dean groaned and had to roll over to take the pressure off his lungs.

"Just wondering about what we were talking about yesterday." Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. "Now that I've got you where you can't run away."

"Whaddaya wan from me, Sam?" Dean coughed and felt like vomiting.

"You do remember that the son of a bitch is still out there, right?"

"Yeah, I know."

"So… mind helping me with the research?"

"What research? The son of bitch has to show us where he's hidin'. Then we get 'im to the God Damn Church on t—" Dean cut off his speech as a huge coughing fit struck him. He was grateful for the trash can under his chin in time. After an eternity of phlegm and not breathing, Dean lay back on the pillows. "Whadda ya wan from me? It's not like you been all gung ho since you and Serena been burnin' gas tween here and Baxter."

"Shut up, Dean."

"Just sayin'… don't go throwin' stones." Dean sneezed up more yuck and shifted his gaze to his son. "Never thought I'd have this, Sammy… and I wan it for you, too. I'm fuckin' tired of huntin'. I'm… I like the tired I am these days, Sammy. Workin' for Bobby, playin' with Johnny, lookin' out for Adam… I love Liz. I don't wan the damn demon fuckin' this up… Show me where he is so I can kill him."

"Yeah, you're right." Sam nodded and set a book on the bed. "I gotta go to work soon. Maybe you try to stay awake and read through that for me. Bobby just got it from an old friend of his. I haven't had a chance."

Liz listened from the doorway with tears brimming in her eyes. He'd finally said it but he'd said it to his brother first. But in the Winchester world, confidants were brothers, sons and fathers… so it made sense. Still, she would like to hear it. She cleared her throat and held the cup of tea out to Dean and set her shopping bag on the bed. "You boys behaving?"

"I am a gem." Dean wrinkled his nose at the tea but took a sip. He thought he couldn't taste, he was wrong. He really wished he couldn't taste. "That's gwoss."

"It'll make you feel better." She insisted. Her eyes drifted to the book on the bed. "Light reading?"

"Just making sure he's useful." Sam winked at her then turned to pick up his nephew. "I'll take him down for breakfast."

"Kay." Liz nodded to him and waited until after he was gone to turn her gaze to her husband. "I took the test this morning."

It took Dean's spinning head a moment to catch up to her sudden shift in subject. Then it had all come back to him. Panic. Missed monthlies. Waiting. The reason Liz had run to the store, had gotten the flat, had had him out changing the tire just the afternoon after he'd been out for two days hunting a vengeful spirit… and the reason he was sick in bed, feeling like he was dying. "Right. And?"

"We lucked out." She offered lamely.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. I'm good. You know?" She traced patterns on his knee while he sipped and made faces at his cup. "It scared me." He raised his eyebrows and nodded his head to his cup. She let out a nervous laugh. "We fought so much while I was pregnant. I don't want that to happen again. We… didn't… there was so much going on that we didn't…"

"Yeah." He agreed. They had never gotten to the root of it all. "Any visions?"

"No." She shook her head. Not a one since Adam had given her the mother of all flash-bang-visions. Things that would not be. Clearing her throat, loudly, she began pulling items out of her bag. "Come on. Sit up."

"Vicks." He sneered at the little blue jar. "Did you get the Dayquil?"

"Maybe."

"I don't wanna sleep all day."

"Okay." She nodded as she slipped a goo-covered hand up the back of his shirt. He groaned in appreciation and leaned his head against her shoulder. He barely gave her enough space to let her do the same treatment on his chest. Treatments done, medicine given, they leaned against one another. "Dean? What if I had been pregnant again?"

"We're not going to think about that. You aren't. It's too soon, anyway. I could have lost you both that night." He took a shallow breath, it was the deepest breath he could manage. "I'm sick and I'm pathetic but… there are days I never want to live over. That last night with you and me before I knew you were pregnant. The night John was born and the night the demon came for you both. I am grateful to have you and John but… I couldn't survive those days again."

"You won't have to." She reassured him. "Get some rest. I'll bring you some soup later."

"Man, I seriously lucked out. I'm sick and gross and I still get a hot chick waiting on me hand and foot." He mumbled as he settled back into his warm pocket. He didn't even open his eyes when she threw her pillow at him.

--

Dean frowned at the text. He dialed his brother's cell. "Dude, I got a question."

"I'm working."

"I know but I need to know about this thing. There's a diagram or something that's not in here."

"It was torn out?"

"No. Says the hierarchy of Hell more or less follows the diagram by some Boser guy. I want to see it."

"I'll call you back."

Dean muddled his way through chapter after chapter. He hated research but damn it, there was something to this. He'd just fallen asleep again when the phone rang. Sam. "Yeah?"

"So I looked it up. Sounded familiar but it didn't click until I saw the diagram. It's the Divine Comedy. Call Bobby. I think he has an outline or maybe even the real thing."

"Now what?"

"Dante… anyway. Tell Bobby you want a diagram of the Inferno if he's got it."

Dean stared at his phone for a long moment before he hung up and dialed Bobby's.

--

Liz doodled behind the bar. It was slow and she had long finished her budget for the week, month… She'd sent home most of her staff simply because it made fiscal sense. John was napping peacefully in the pen they had set up just inside the kitchen. Adam wouldn't be home from school for another two hours.

When Bobby walked in, waved her off and walked into the back, she sat up. Shaking her head, she glanced down at her doodles. Alien symbols. Great. Like she wanted to remember any of that right now.

--

Bobby handed Dean the sheaf of papers and stared at the mess on the bed; notes and books. "Never knew you to be a book hound, Dean"

"Just tryin' to figure this book out." Dean tapped the page in front of him.

"Dante is pretty heavy stuff."

"This dude is full on with the dimensions and crossing over."

"That's metaphysics. Never known you to go there, Dean."

"Well, it's startin' to bake sense. Hell is a real pwlace where demons bwreed and souls are tortured. That is real." Dean scanned the diagrams and explanations Bobby had brought over. Dean studied the diagram. He'd seen it before. Levels of Hell. Then his eyes landed on a level just below the entrance to Hell. He sneezed loudly but managed to get to the tissue before spewing all over his hard work. "This book subboses evbrything this Dante guy wrote has some basis in reality. The Deadly sins were insbired by Demons infecting Humans and so on and so forth with ebry demon out there."

"What's your point?"

"Bobby… look." Dean pointed to the top of the diagram. "There's a pwlace for neutrals. We saw Max. He was here. He's helped us. He's able to cross ober from where he is to our world and he was able to bing some powerful friends of his."

"What friends?"

"Don't know. There were six ghosts in the room that night. Max there… maybe Dad."

"If Max is neutral… how would he be in contact with souls in hell?"

"He's a hybid. Alien and Human. Maybe the human bart of him gibes him access. Look at this. If Dad's in Hell… he's here. With the Wrathful."

"Your daddy was a fraud too." Bobby tapped the lower section of the diagram.

"But the ribers…" Dean pointed out. "Acheron, Styx, and Phlegathon. To cross Styx you have to take a solemn oath and Dad communicates across the levels of hell."

"This Demon your daddy crossed. He's not an upper tier type, Dean. I'd say he's down near the bottom."

"Okay, fine. He's burning in the fucking bimstone. He's still baking contact when the demons aren't looking. It's gotta be connected."

"Okay, so what about it?"

"I don't know but I have to know."

--

Adam glanced around as he picked at his dinner. "Did Dean go away again?"

"No, but he got a pretty bad cold so I confined him to bed." Liz shook her head as she balanced her son on one leg and tried to eat with her left hand.

"So… he can't spar with me later?"

"Afraid not. He should stay in bed another day at least… but school is out in two days… so then he can go out with you and do some… fun stuff, I guess."

"Oh."

"Did you want to do the day camp thing?"

"No way. Only geeks go to day camp." He scoffed at her.

"If you get bored, I'm putting you to work." She warned him.

"Think Sam would spar with me?"

"You could ask him… but after dinner."

--

Dean snapped the book shut with a scoff. Liz arched an eyebrow at him but didn't stop bathing the baby. He scoffed again. "Doesn't this prove that there is no heaven?"

"What does?"

"We have full maps and descriptions of Hell in all its many, many levels and dimensions but not for Heaven." He shoved the book aside. "Isn't that proof?"

Liz mulled that over a moment while she splashed warm water over her son's back. "Who drew the maps of Hell? Escapees?"

"Maybe."

"Then there would be no one to draw the maps of Heaven."

"How's that?" Dean stared up at her.

"If you're IN Heaven… why would you leave?"

"Don't be all logical with me."

One month later…  
(July 3, 2011)

Liz leaned over Adam's book to see what he was reading. "Harry Potter?"

"It's on the reading list." He shrugged. "I already saw all the movies."

"There are movies?" She asked and watched him groan. "What?"

"Last year when the last one came out, it was everywhere."

"Well, we didn't have a TV until the latter part of the year and we still don't have cable."

"Yeah, I know. Rabbit ears suck." He folded his arms over the book over his chest. "Does he have to go?"

"There are people who need help. These things are dangerous and… I do worry and I don't want him to go but I don't want people's deaths on my head because I told him that he couldn't go."

"Well, what are these things?"

"He said that it's a Raw-head and he's fought them before. It should be no big deal. He'll be back in a couple of days and then we can bug him to death again." She slid onto the bed next to him and wrapped an arm around him. "I really don't want him to go, either. I like having him around."

"Yeah."

--

Dean stared at his car. Still sleek and black. Well oiled machine.

It had a car-seat and a Game-boy in the backseat. Used Kleenex on the floor. Johnny's bunny under the backseat and the diaper bag under the front seat.

Sam bit back a laugh at the expression on his brother's face. "What's wrong, Dean?"

"My baby's been domesticated," he pouted as he removed the offending items in case Liz might need them while the Winchester brothers rode out to fight the forces of darkness. "It's a sad, sad day. I used to have sex in this car and now I've got kids and their toys crawling all over my backseat."

Sam started to laugh and then frowned. "But… you haven't had sex in the car for years, right?"

"What's that?" Dean tucked his bottom lip into his mouth, head swinging around to not quite meet his brother's gaze.

"You haven't had sex in the car since we hooked up again, right?"

"Um, I'm not sure." Dean shook his head.

"Well, not in the last three, right?"

"That's… not real accurate." He narrowed his eyes. "Not this year, I can guarantee that."

"What? No. Never mind. I don't want to know."

--

Liz wrapped up the food and tossed it in a brown paper bag. She checked the phones and made sure the chargers were in the side pocket of Dean's duffle. When she joined the men outside, Dean was lecturing their son. "So, you keep an eye out and tell Mom if something's wrong." John was more interested in chewing on Dean's jacket collar. "Or pass it on to Adam and he can get word out… Make sure that Adam is putting up the sigils and checking the locks, okay?"

"I'm on it." Adam reassured him from where he was sitting in the backseat. He took the duffle from Liz and secured it on the seat before reaching over to put the brown bag in the front seat. Sam watched as Dean put his arm around Liz and held her close. They didn't speak but the embrace said it all. Then it was all real quick. The kiss and mumbled goodbye. The passing of the baby from father to mother. The ruffle of Adam's hair before Dean set him on his feet in the lot once more. Sam paused a moment to wave to his family before sitting beside Dean in the front seat. A moment later, they were on the road and the trio in the rearview mirror was just a shrinking blob.

"Dude… you okay?" Sam whispered.

"Let's hurry up and get this thing killed." Dean croaked out, his throat tight from trying to control the worry and emotion he'd felt at leaving his family.

"Dean?" Sam stared but he couldn't see his brother behind the mask.

This felt different than the last three hunts he'd been on since John had been born but he couldn't figure out what it was.

--

Kyle picked at his fries. "I don't know what I said."

"You had to have said something for her to kick you out." Liz pointed out as she set the cleaned glasses in rows behind the bar.

"We were fine last night. This morning, we were fine. All I said when I walked in tonight was… oh… oh. No…" Kyle swept a hand over his face."

"What? What'd you say?"

"It's what I didn't say." Kyle shut his eyes. "We were on our fifth date today, three years ago and that's when I said… you know."

"Wow."

"I just walked in and asked what's for dinner. Then she started cursing and throwing things at me and yelling at me to get out."

Liz placed her hands on top of his. "This is what you're going to do. You're going to go down the street and pick her some flowers from the field. You're going to hand them to her and tell her that you're sorry. You had a bad day at work but it's no excuse for forgetting your anniversary. Then you're going to call every restaurant in Rutherford until you get a reservation and you're taking her out tomorrow night."

"I am?"

"Yes. You are." Then she tapped his hand. "Even if she says that you don't have to do that… just say that you want to make her feel special. Okay?"

"I think I got it."

"Good. Go." Liz shooed him off then went into the kitchen to check on the boys. She was just slightly surprised to find Adam changing John's diaper. She didn't want to make fun of him so she just went about her business of getting a soda from the refrigerator. "Does he need a change of clothes?"

"Nah, he was just wet." Adam powdered and strapped the baby into a new diaper.

"Who showed you how to change a diaper?"

"Dean." The boy shrugged. "He was showing Sam how."

"Well, you did a good job."

"I don't think I'll try poopy diapers though."

"I don't blame you and I wish I had that option." She took John from him and took a seat at the metal table in the middle of the kitchen. "You know, you don't have to. I appreciate the help but don't feel like you have to help with him."

"I… feel better when I take care of him… I don't feel so… alone."

"Oh?"

"Both my parents were aliens. I'm the only one like me… but you're kind of like me and so John's kind of like you… so he's like me, too."

"He's not so entertaining now and in a few years, he'll probably be annoying to you but when you're older, you'll probably find out that he looks up to you… kind of like a brother."

"You think?"

"Yeah, I think so." She brushed his dark hair out of his face. "I probably haven't said it and I definitely should. I know that I had my doubts about you coming to live with us but I need you to know this." She took a deep breath. "I loved your dad. With everything I had. I knew that you were out there and a piece of him and that he loved you. If ever there came a day when you were in my life… I knew that I would have to love you or else." She stared at him. "I knew that if I couldn't find it in me to love you that I would lose him… I realized that before he even gave you up. I've had many years to ponder what might happen if you came back to us."

"Even after everything that she did?"

"Yeah. You're his son. He was my husband. Maybe it makes you my stepson but you're family because your family is mine too. Your Aunt Isabel and I are still sisters even though Max is gone. Dean is my husband now and he respects that bond."

"I was mean to him at first."

"I know."

"I just didn't want him to be a jerk to me first."

"I know."

"I think he likes me okay."

"He does. He thinks you're a cool kid." She smiled at him and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "He told me that you remind him of himself at your age."

"But he didn't lose his whole family."

"No, but his life wasn't good for as long as yours was. He was just a child when he found out what was in the darkness. When his mother was taken away and he had to watch his father fall apart." Shifting her son in her arms, she pulled Adam closer. "You have people to take care of you. He didn't. He had to learn to take care of himself and his brother and his father at an age when he shouldn't have."

Adam watched her eyes change as she kept speaking. "I'd come home from a hunt. I'd be wrecked from everything I'd seen, from the things I'd killed. Bruised and cut and a mess. Dean would be waiting up for me. He'd come and sit next to me and put his hand on my shoulder and say, 'it's okay, Dad. It's okay.' And I know that he shouldn't have been saying that to me. I should have been saying it to him. He was five years old."

--

Sam opened the door and gripped the Taser. He watched Dean carefully. Dark had fallen just as they had hit the town. He remembered the last Raw-head they had gone after. How he'd almost lost Dean. He followed his brother into the sewer and almost missed the signs. It wasn't until Dean gripped his Taser in one hand and flicked open a baton with the other that he realized they were in the nest.

The younger Winchester never had a chance to get his punches in. Dean's left arm snapped the baton against the side of its head, his right leg kicked it in the chest and then Dean's right arm plunged the Taser into its neck. The Raw-head's body did a dance until it was dead. Sam stared at the picture Dean made. Fierce concentration draining from his face, actually making him a little pale. "Dean?"

"I'm good." Dean rolled his shoulders. "Let's head back. We can be home by midnight."

Sam stared at his brother. The warrior in his brother. He'd always known his brother to be belligerent but the determination he saw in his brother was sobering. All acts before this one were done with a sort of devil may care attitude that had always driven Sam nuts. This wasn't that. This was the display of a man who knew exactly what he had to lose and wasn't about to let that happen.

"Sam! Let's go!"

--

Adam focused. If he tilted his head just the right way, he should see the shimmer hovering near to Liz ever since she'd said those weird things about Dean in the kitchen. There were three shimmers near Liz but he couldn't see them aside from faint outlines. She was smiling but her eyes were sad. She didn't seem to remember falling out of their conversation earlier.

She tweaked his nose as she passed him to pick up John who was squealing out high-pitched syllables. She spun around with him in her arms and made smacking kisses in his neck. Liz pinched Adam's cheek lightly. "I'm closing up soon. You want to round up the empties?"

Shrugging, Adam picked up a bucket and made his way around the bar, which was nearly empty anyway. He carried his bucket back to the bar where Liz spent the remainders down the drain and then tossed the bottles into a can and set the glasses in another bucket to carry to the kitchen.

It happened so fast. The lights flickered, then Liz screamed. The baby started crying and the doors banged open and shut. The lights went out. Adam dropped his bucket and backed his way underneath a booth table. The bar went silent except for John's cries. Adam couldn't see. Slowly, he reached up on top of the table and grabbed the salt shaker. He poured lines against the edges of the bench bottoms, forming himself a protective cave.

"Who's there?" Liz's voice called out. A table flew through the air and knocked over several others, sending their contents rolling passed Adam. With a shaking hand, he reached out and grabbed as many salt shakers as he possibly could, thickening his protective lines. He was peering around the bench when he heard the heavy footsteps. "Who's there?"

--

Dean frowned as the radio DJ tossed out the date. "Sammy?"

"Yeah?"

"How old is Johnny?"

"Um…" Sam squinted his eyes as he ticked off the months. "Five… no, six months today."

"Today?" Dean pressed his foot to the floorboard.

"Exactly." He took a breath when he let the synapses fire in the right direction. "He's exactly six months old today."

TBC


	67. Chapter 66

Part 66 – An hour later…  
(July 3, 2011)

Liz slid along the floor with Johnny in her arms. Her head throbbed and energy crackled up and down her arms. She could taste blood in her mouth. Glasses flew over her head and smashed against the wall. She arched her back to create an umbrella for John, wincing when the falling pieces hit her flesh. He whimpered and pouted but she couldn't afford to stop and calm him down.

"Liz." Came the hiss from behind her. She could barely make out Adam's frightened face in the shadow of his hiding place. She pushed her son towards him. Adam's eyes went wide but he reached out and pulled the baby close and lifted him over the salt line. Then more glasses flew across the room, shattering and raining down on Liz.

"Sh. Sh." Adam whispered to the baby in his arms as he retreated against the back wall. He watched Liz get to her feet, watched the blood run down the back of her leg. Watched the green energy crackling up and down her body grow brighter.

--

Sam concentrated on the road as if he could make the car go faster. Dean's focus on the road was something Sam had never seen, ever. It was getting late and they might make it. The worry might all be for nothing. It wasn't like they knew for certain that something would happen. They just had past experience and a pissed off demon who had expressed an interest in obtaining a Winchester boy with some alien juice in his blood. "God knows what demon blood would do to him."

"Shut up, Sam."

"I didn't mean to… I was just thinking out loud."

"Well, stop it."

--

Time stood still. Adam stared out into the black outside his little space. A face appeared just outside the table. "So, you've got my little prince. Let's play make a deal."

"No." Adam shook his head, shrinking back with Johnny squirming in his arms.

"Come on… She loves you, you could take his place. Give me the baby and you get Mommy Liz and Daddy Dean all to yourself."

"No."

"Ah." Liz gasped as an invisible embrace tightened around her body, causing her cuts to sing out in agony.

"Hand him over or I'll show you what little Dean Winchester saw when he was just a wee four years old."

"Ah!" Liz screamed louder as her feet left the ground… but the energy coursing through her body grew brighter.

--

Dean skidded the Impala into the parking lot and threw open his door, shotgun in hand. He ran full speed at the door, forcing it open and swinging his gun arm into the main room. "Liz!" He stopped short, causing Sam to collide with his back. Liz hung suspended three feet off the ground, her body coursing with energy but helpless against the assault by a figure that was hidden in shadows.

"Sam, go get my gun. It's in the trunk."

"Dean, my boy. Back so soon?"

"Put her down." Dean cocked his shotgun and stepped into the bar. Then he saw a familiar face in the darkest shadow of the room. He hated the guy. Hated him but he didn't wish this fate on him. "So, you're possessing my defeats, now? Billy couldn't fight to save his life."

"Pride, Dean. It's a sin."

"So, I'm told."

"Dean!" Liz squeaked out as the pressure around her body tightened, glass digging deeper into her flesh.

Sam skidded to a halt next to his brother, iron rod in one hand and the gun in the other. Dean took it from his brother and leveled it at the possessed human across the bar. The demon laughed. "How are you going to use your toy if I have your batteries?"

Liz shrieked as she was squeezed again. Her energy hit a fever pitch. Then it was like every molecule of oxygen lit up between Liz and Dean. A bridge of some sort. A conduit that shot her energy straight into him and channeled itself into the gun. Dean pulled the trigger and the world went silent for a single moment.

Then it all happened at once. Yellow Eyes choked on his air when the bullet entered his temporal lobe. Green energy crackled around his body before he fell to his knees and finally face forward onto the bar floor. Liz fell to the ground, screaming as her body collided with the wooden floor, cuts splitting wider, shards of glass digging deeper. Dean hit his knees as his brain lit up in pain and his vision exploded in a thousand pinpoints of light. Sam was thrown back against the wall, cracking his skull against a picture frame.

Dean blinked rapidly once the pain in his cranium had cooled. He could see the outlines of figures standing between him and his wife's prone body and figures standing in front of a booth in the back of the bar. He shook his head and looked again, he could see them. Max knelt over Liz, Pastor Jim glancing around, Marty and Dr. Meyer with their hands joined, some guy who looked like Max crouching in the middle… and his dad towering over him with something in his eyes. Shaking his head again, Dean looked to the other gathering. Jess standing on her tiptoes to see something behind Dean, Caleb leaning against the booth's table with his arms crossed and some blonde chick kneeling and looking beneath the table.

"Dad?" Dean switched his gaze back to the figure standing over him. He actually felt his father's hand in his hair. "Dad."

"We did it. It's over." John reassured his boy. "I don't know how much time we have before whatever happens happens but I wanted to tell you… I'm proud."

"How?" Dean gripped his father's arm to hold on just a little longer.

"Don't know. One time deal, us helping you two out. Next time, you better be with her." John warned gently. "Somehow… I don't think that's going to be a problem."

"Jess?" Sam's voice croaked out in surprise but he crossed the room to investigate. Tears slipped from his eyes when he felt her arms around him.

"No love? Geez." Caleb shrugged but didn't move from his spot against the table.

"Mother of God…" Pastor Jim whispered as he looked around the familiar bar. "We all died… didn't we?"

"You know it." The crouched figure mumbled.

"Zan, can it." Max muttered as he laid a hand on Liz's back. "Dean, she's okay for now but she's been bleeding awhile."

Dean forced himself to his feet, accepting Marty's help when he stumbled on his way to his wife. Her back was soaked with blood, glass shards and pieces lay everywhere. "Liz?"

"Dean… the boys." Liz pushed the words out though she wasn't lucid.

"Tess?" Max called over.

"They're under here. They're fine." The blonde swung her head around to address them before sticking it back under the table.

"Adam." Dean called over.

"Who are all these things?" Adam called back but didn't climb out from his hiding place.

"Friends and family. Where's John?" Dean started to get to his feet again but his bones were still singing from his alien infusion.

"Right here. We're okay."

"Come on out, Bud." Slowly, Adam climbed out with John in his arms and crossed the distance to where Dean knelt next to Liz. He rushed into Dean's arms hid his face from the curious onlookers. Dean secured the boys in his arms and nudged Adam. "Come on. Look up. I want you to take a good look at everyone standing in this room. Everyone in here is our family."

Adam took a deep breath and did as told. His eyes studied nine faces and committed them to memory before they all flickered and disappeared from sight. "Where'd they go?"

"Hopefully some place better than where they were."

TBC


	68. Chapter 67

Part 67 – later that night…  
(July 4, 2011)

Liz gasped but held tight to Dean while Sam pulled the glass out. Adam and little John had long since passed out. Sam had taken care of burying the body. Dean had calmed the boys down and assessed Liz's war wounds. It took two hours to fully clean every cut on Liz's back. Then Sam went downstairs to lock up and put up a closed sign.

Dean leaned against the headboard with Liz lying on top of him. "You asleep?"

"No." She shook her head.

"In pain?"

"No, I'm good."

"It's over."

"I would hope so." She sighed and lifted her head to look at him. "The boys?"

"Both down in Adam's room. I put the monitor in there."

"Good." She shut her eyes and wished he could put his arms around her. She knew the pain it would ignite if he did but she still wanted it.

--

Bobby looked the gun over. It didn't look any different than when he'd given it to the Winchesters. He looked around and studied the charred spot where poor Billy's body had lain until Sam had dragged it away. "So, the gun only works if you both hold on it, huh."

"Apparently." Liz shrugged and sipped her coffee. "I feel really horribly that we had to kill Billy but it's over."

They sat in silence, brows furrowed as they wrapped their minds around the fact that the guy was gone. He wasn't a bad person, really. Clearly he'd had some issues if a demon was able to possess him. Still, too many people had gone that way. Bobby didn't know what to say to that, he still hadn't recovered from losing his best friend. "You just have to keep an eye out for the next wave."

"Pardon me?"

"Once other demons get wind of what you and Dean done… they'll want to make sure that the same won't happen to them."

"So what? Now we're targets?" Dean frowned from where he sat examining the boys for any damage they hadn't seen the night before.

"I'd say so. Good luck with that." Bobby clapped him on the back. He almost left but he caught sight of a sheaf of papers on the table top. "Who drew these?"

"Adam's been doodling all morning." Dean shrugged as he fought to get socks on his child.

Bobby's rapt focus caught Liz's attention. She rose and peered around his arm at some familiar faces. "You know these folks?"

"That's Max… that's Zan, Max's duplicate… that's Tess."

"It is?" Adam pulled that sheet out of their hands. "That was her?"

"I didn't see much, I was a little preoccupied." Liz showed the pictures to Dean.

"Dad, Marty, Dr. Meyer and that one is Pastor Jim. He was family." Dean pointed to each in turn. "That's Jess…"

"Sam's Jess?"

"Yeah." Dean nodded. "And that's Caleb… he was a good friend."

"That he was." Bobby nodded in agreement. "I was thinking… about what we talked about last month… maybe there's something that happens to a spirit that's killed by demons… maybe the rules don't apply."

"Maybe." Dean shrugged and stared at the picture of his father. Adam had captured him exactly. "You did a good job on these, bud."

"Where is your brother?"

"He needed some space after last night."

--

Sam looked up when Liz entered the room. She just sat at the foot of his bed. She didn't say a word but he knew that she knew what he had seen the night before. "Happy 4th of July."

"Right?" Liz snorted. "How are you holding up?"

"Not so good." He frowned. "It took me a long time to accept that she was gone. I knew her body was gone but her spirit… and to know that it was trapped somewhere with other victims of the Yellow-Eyed demon. She felt real, Liz." His nostrils flared as he forced himself to breathe. "I had my arms around her and she… vanished. She's gone… and I'm messed up and I have a girlfriend." He wiped at his eyes and tried to focus. "I probably shouldn't have but I called her this morning. I told her everything. About Mom, Dad, Jess, you and last night… everything and she'll probably never talk to me again. She'll think I'm nuts and she's better off."

"Maybe you give her a chance." Liz offered lamely.

"She was the only blonde that I've ever fallen for." Sam laughed to himself. "I never looked at them before and I haven't looked at them since. Sarah… was so real. She lived in the world and saw it for what it was."

"What makes Serena different enough for you, Sam?"

"She's smart. Really smart. She could have been a rocket scientist but she couldn't see how she could help the world by learning to blow shit up. So she went to nursing school to pay the bills. Because she could take in parts of other people's lives while her life was falling apart. She's studying to be a doctor so she can save lives and start her own practice and be the one-man-band." Sam took a deep breath and looked at his sister-in-law. "She takes in everything and uses it. Music, math, stuff she reads. She just… processes it and turns it back out. Emotions. She reads me even though I don't tell her the truth about me."

"Sounds to me like she knew something was coming before this morning. Maybe she knows you well enough to know how to use this to know you better."

--

Dean leaned back on the trunk. "You still got two months of vacation."

"Yeah." Adam shrugged.

"It's safe for you to go visit your grandparents."

"I know but…"

"'Sup?"

"I don't know them and I like it here."

"It's so weird… I never thought I'd have some place to go when I killed that son of a bitch and I'm already home." Dean shut his eyes and listened to Adam's breathing and scuffing the dirt.

"Hey, um… when Tess's ghost was here, she was talking to me and I didn't really understand… mostly cause I didn't know who she was at the time."

"What'd she say?"

"That she's the one who started it… that it was all her fault cause she kept trying to fix things but they kept getting more and more messed up."

"What sorts of things?"

"She said she helped at first and Liz was helping people. Then she… saw you and you were going to mess things up so she showed you to Liz and it kind of worked cause it made you stay away for a long time." Adam looked up at him. "I guess it was when she was married to Max, still, huh."

"Probably."

"She said that she tried again to keep you away to protect us and that's when she met your dad and then they realized that they should work together to stop the bad things instead of avoiding the… inclusion of one life into the other… she used a lot of big words."

"You know what, we'll sit down with Liz and straighten it all out. She knows the details on the visions… I just show up and shoot shit."

"Okay."

"You okay?"

"It's weird. She said from now on, she won't be able to help… we're on our own." Adam sat down on the ground. "Where were they before and where are they now?"

"To tell the truth, most of the guys we saw last night, were hanging out in hell for one reason or another. Some of them were caught some place in between. I don't know for certain. Now… hopefully they didn't go back there. I'd like to think they went to a better place. Heaven or just… not hell."

Two days later…  
(July 6, 2011)

Kyle listened to the tale as Adam explained it to Liz. He ran a hand over his face then turned to Liz. "Do you think they were hanging around and laughing their asses off while we were scratching our heads?"

"I thought our theories were pretty sound. I didn't know the visions were given to me specifically by the ghost of my husband's ex." Liz shook her head. She rested a hand on Adam's shoulder and tried to wrap her mind around it. "It's a little creepy."

"A little?" Kyle snorted.

"Why did she butt in at all?" Adam piped up.

"She had a blueprint or access to some grand plan." Liz mused. "She had to have seen something that upset her and made her want to change it."

"Where's that notebook?" Kyle jumped up and started rifling through Liz's desk drawers.

"Kyle… we went through all those not-verses." She groaned but stood up to help him look for it.

"I have it." Adam's voice was small as he pulled the worn notebook from his backpack. The three of them read through it again. After two hours of discussion, they were ready to scream. "You're saying that she didn't like something in each of these visions, but there's just a little piece."

Kyle folded his hands on the table and took a deep breath. "Maybe it's not what she showed us but what she didn't. What in these universes didn't she like enough to show us what could have happened?"

"Okay…" Liz tilted her head back. "What was most important to Tess?"

Both sets of eyes settled on Adam.

--

Sam found his brother sitting in the backseat of the Impala with John in the car seat. The radio played some classic rock softly above the sounds of sloshing beer and sucking noises. Suppressing a snicker, Sam leaned in the back passenger window. "What's going on?"

"We changed the oil, refilled the coolant, tested the timing chain… and now we're enjoying the shade with a couple of bottles."

"Really."

"Liz and Adam are talking alien business. Still kinda weirds me out." Dean took a pull on his beer with his left hand, his right hand busy grazing Johnny's leg with a finger. Johnny sleepily sucked on his bottle. "How're you holding up?"

"You know me… I brood." Both brothers had a good chuckle at that.

Another pull, gulp, slosh. "Adam's been having nightmares. Doesn't want me to tell Liz."

"Are you going to?"

"Nah. Rug rat trusts me. If I break his trust, then who's he gonna go to?"

"Someone with a conscience?" Sam cracked.

"Maybe." Dean shrugged.

"You know… there's a lot of trouble headed our way."

"Yep." He nodded and looked over at his brother. "It means that any demons we hunt up, we gotta take Liz with us." Measured the amount of beer in his bottle. "Of course, where Liz goes, John goes and we can't leave Adam behind."

"Impala's getting a little crowded with five people."

"Who said you were riding with us?"

"You're kicking me out of the family. Just like that?"

"No, just saying you gotta get your own car now." Dean smirked up at the ceiling. "Me and Liz in the front seat, the boys in the back… you didn't think you were gonna ride shotgun the rest of our lives, did you?"

Sam shrugged but really thought about it. "No, I didn't. I really didn't."

"What kind of car does Serena drive?"

"Malibu… Eighty-something. Why?"

"Is that her car pulling in?"

--

Liz held a hand in each of hers and concentrated. She spun the scenes around in her head the way she had after she'd read them all. Felt all the flavors that made that universe different from the one they existed in. Then she did something else. She rewound the vision and followed it back to the point where it all changed. Where Tess thought that it had all gone wrong. Her eyes opened just as Sam and Serena were traipsing through the kitchen. "Hey Liz… mind if I use your guestroom for a private chat?"

"Private…" Kyle waggled his eyebrows at Sam but got swatted by Liz for his trouble.

Adam tugged on Liz's arm suddenly. "Liz… Liz, I gotta talk to you."

"What?" She turned her attention to him.

"I have to tell you something that I remembered I never knew."

"What?" Kyle and Sam blurted out together.

"You two, go chat." Liz waved off Sam. "You, come with me." She steered Adam out the backdoor.

Kyle frowned but didn't follow when he was left alone in the kitchen. He watched Adam's face from the kitchen. Then watched as the color drained from Liz's face.

--

John slapped his hands against his father's face, squealing with glee. Dean just grinned and enjoyed his time with his son. He had the feeling that their time was coming to a close as it was getting too quiet. No one had come to grab him for a meal. No one had come looking to squeeze the baby. Adam hadn't been sent out for a man-to-man talk about something erroneous that had spilled out of his mouth.

--

Sam leaned against the headboard, Serena curled up against him. Hunting could wait. It could all wait, he just wanted to lay there for the rest of his life. When the knock came, he groaned. "Yeah?"

"Hey man." Dean stuck his head in. "Liz says dinner is in an hour. Wants to know if Serena is staying."

Serena met Sam's eyes and nodded slightly. "Yeah, I'm staying."

"Okay… just so we're clear. That is a literal yes to dinner and some kind of code for… I'm not dumping Sam's freaky ass… right?"

"Dean!" Liz shrieked from down the hall.

"Dean, go away. We'll be down for dinner." Sam shook his head and leaned his head against hers.

--

Liz hissed slightly as she shifted onto her back. Dean scooted to the far edge of the bed. Adam rolled in his sleep, limbs flailing in the process. Dean raised an eyebrow at her across the kid's head. "What exactly did you see in these visions?"

"Tess was apparently trying to make sure that Adam had a good life. In those weird worlds where you and I aren't together the way we are now… Adam was being abused or unloved or dead."

"What about that one where you and Max had him?"

"Kivar killed him the next year. There was another one where I had a bunch of kids and Adam… You killed Adam because you thought he was a demon. Started a war between humans and aliens… well, hunters and aliens."

"So… she was just taking care of him, huh."

"Yeah."

"Gave him nightmares?"

"I'd be surprised if it hadn't." She rolled onto her side to face him and relieve the pressure on her still-tender back. "He saw something else."

"Oh yeah?"

"A gun. Shoots glass bullets, like little light bulbs, he said."

"Okay."

"Someone has to build it."

"I don't know anyone who knows how to build a gun that shoots light bulbs."

"Adam said that Serena built it… for us to use. In case we got separated."

"Well, that's never gonna happen."

"You don't know that, Dean."

"I won't let it happen."

"Then, now what? Even if she agrees to make the damned thing, how long will it take? We're gonna have demons gunning for our family."

"I'll think of something."

"Dean, I had a vision."

TBC


	69. Chapter 68

Part 68 – a week later…  
(July 11, 2011)

"I can go by myself." Adam scoffed as he shoved open the doors to the diner.

"Ten minutes then I come looking for you." Dean warned and settled into the booth. "Liz will be back any minute."

"Whatever, man." Adam hurried to the bathrooms.

"Yeah, you better run." Dean muttered and checked on John sleeping in his carrier. "You will be better behaved." He was so tired. Driving all night to Missouri had not been his idea of a detour but Liz had insisted. Her visions were driving him nuts. He would just lay his head down for a minute.

"Dean Winchester!"

He snapped his head up groggily. "It wasn't me." He tried to open his eyes but the diner lights were too bright. The figure approaching his table was definitely feminine. Wiping the sleep from his eyes, he recognized her immediately. "Cassie?"

"So, it is you." She tilted her head at him. "You look good."

"Yeah." He nodded, struggling to fully waken. "You, too. What are you doing in…" Where the hell were they? Stopping for visions weren't an exact science. At this rate, they were never getting to Roswell before the summer was over.

"You're in Anguilla, Dean."

"Right and you're here…"

"I'm doing a story on a rash of murders."

"Oh… No, no. You don't want to do that." Dean shook his head. His wits were finally coming back to him. "You want to stay as far away from that story as possible."

She looked to the ceiling and took a breath. "Is this one of your jobs?"

"Maybe." He nodded.

"I don't see you for years and then when I do, it's because of that."

"It's not like I've been pining and planning for a way to meet up with you, Cassie." Dean winced when his voice reached a pitch that startled the baby. "Crap." Sliding out of the booth, he went about unlatching the baby from the carrier. "Hey, hey, hey. No problems. No problems. Sh. Sh. Sh."

"What moron let you watch their kid?" Cassie moved in for a closer look at the baby.

"Cassie Robinson, meet John Winchester." The baby settled as soon as Dean held him in his arms.

"Sam's baby?" Cassie breathed out.

"My baby, thank you." Dean shook his head.

"You have a child?" She crossed her arms. "Really?"

"Look. You and me, that was a long time ago. Now I have a kid." Dean spotted Adam returning from the bathroom. "Two kids."

"Two kids. You. Right."

"This is Adam." Dean gestured to the boy sliding into the booth.

"That one's too old to be your son."

"I'm his stepson." Adam answered. "I'm gonna tell Liz."

"Sh." Dean made a face at the boy.

"Who's Liz?" Cassie addressed the little boy.

"His wife."

"Oh, you're married. Well, I can honestly say that I didn't see that coming." She raised her eyebrows. "Does she know what you do for a living?"

"Yeah, I do." Liz answered for him and took her son from him. "Hi sweetie, Mommy's back."

"I think I scared him." Dean admitted.

"How long did he sleep?"

"Like… an hour?"

"He needs to go back down."

"Um…" Dean cleared his throat. "Cassie, this is my wife, Liz. Liz, this is Cassie."

"Nice to meet you." Liz nodded to her as she tried to settle her son.

"Nice to meet you." Cassie gave Dean a look. "I have work to do."

"Stay away from the story, Cassie." Dean warned as she walked away.

Liz got busy pacing with the baby as a waitress took their orders. Dean stared at the table for the longest time until… "So, that was your ex?"

"Um… yeah…" Dean nodded as she slid in next to him.

"She wasn't that pretty." Adam announced.

Liz snickered and rubbed Dean's leg to get his attention. "She was kind of cute… maybe you do have standards."

"Hot chick or bust… except for that waitress in Tampa." Dean shuddered, going for the joke end of the situation. He stared at her hard. "A lot changes in just one year, Liz."

"Yeah, I know."

"I haven't seen Cassie since… '06 maybe."

"Okay…" She tilted her head at him wondering where he was going with this line.

"That's about five years… Longer than I've known you. One year ago, we had a conversation that changed my life forever."

"We did?" Liz met his gaze for the longest time. "Oh."

"Yeah, oh." He nodded. "We didn't know shit last year. I do know that tonight, we're gonna kill this thing. I'll probably save an ex's life and then I'll never see her again. By our anniversary, no later, we'll be in Roswell where there are a hundred and one babysitters willing to take our monsters for the night."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

--

Cassie crossed her arms and paced the room. "This is so typical. He runs off into the night to battle something that no one can see and he leaves the women and children to cower in a room, waiting for the hero's return."

"You and I don't know each other well but I can already tell you that you don't know Dean." Liz shook her head as she dressed her son in fresh clothes. "If it was a demon, he would have left you here to watch the kids and I would be with him. This is just a disgruntled ghost and frankly, you will not find me digging up any graves in the middle of the night. I'd prefer sitting and waiting this one out."

"How are you so calm about all of this?"

"Her first husband was an alien." Adam answered from where he was throwing punches at a mirror. "Her second husband is a demon hunter. No big whoop… hey… if he dies, can I pick the next one's occupation?"

"You. You're not funny." Liz chided him softly.

"You talk about it all the time."

"It's not funny even then." Liz bopped him on the head when he passed by. She straightened John's shirt then took a good look at the logo on the front. "Daddy and I are going to have a talk about him sneaking AC/DC shirts into your diaper bag."

"AC/DC is awesome." Adam protested.

"I'm outnumbered. Where is Sam when you need him." Liz groaned as she hefted her heavy boy into her arms.

"Where is Sam?" Cassie turned from the window.

"Minding the store." Liz shrugged. "He volunteered to stay behind while we went to visit my parents."

"It's a bar, not a store." Adam cut in.

"It's a figure of speech." Liz cut her eyes at him before continuing. "Sam and his girlfriend are in an awkward place, taking off just now would make it near impossible to… fix things."

"Sam's a nice guy, I hope that works out for him."

"Yeah, me too." Liz watched Cassie pace in her peripheral vision. She finally cleared her throat. "Can I ask you something?"

"What's that?" Cassie turned from the window at last.

"Why didn't you believe him when he told you?"

"Let's just say that you and I met Dean under very different circumstances." Cassie shook her head.

Liz made sure that Adam was thoroughly engrossed in a TV show before she responded. "Dean walked into the bar where I work and leered at me, then he said, 'I'll bet you a hundred dollars that I can bounce a quarter off your ass and into a shot glass and if I can't, I'll just have to be your sex slave until I work it off.' Needless to say, I was not his biggest fan from the get-go."

"You forgave a lame line like that?"

"I was married. I told him that if he bounced a quarter off my ass he'd be spending the next six years picking his teeth out of the field." Liz shrugged. "It's not like Dean and I spent a lot of time courting… then again, I knew what he did before that started up."

"Why'd you believe him?"

"I saw it with my own two eyes… I guess that helps some."

"It's just crazy to say it out loud."

"A lot of things are." Liz stood to begin pacing John to sleep. "I met Dean just after his father died. Over time, he became a friend of mine and my husband's… after Max died… Sam helped to put me back together. Dean and I… fought it for over a year but it was probably inevitable… Less than a year later, I was pregnant and we were married and now we've taken in Max's son from another relationship and Sam's in love with a girl and it's just… working."

"I think I was scared the first time Dean and I were together… I was in college and I didn't want this big thing and then he tells me he hunts evil… so I cut him loose… and when I needed his help, he came." Cassie turned back to the window. "I kind of realized that while I liked what we had… it wasn't ever going to be enough. Don't get me wrong, I think Dean is smart but he doesn't let himself stay on that level with me… we fight and we makeup and that's the part that worked…" She pulled a chain out of her blouse. "I've been engaged on and off to the same man for… three years. I never really committed to him because my mom keeps asking me what about Dean? Like I've been waiting for him all this time… and now… I realize that I wasn't. It just wasn't ever going to work but it was a good excuse to keep other things from working."

"I hear you." Liz's head turned to the window when the Impala rumbled into the lot.

Dean bounded in a moment later, sweaty, filthy and bruised. He stopped inside the door and looked between them. "Did I miss something?"

"They were telling stories on you." Adam pronounced from his perch on the end of a bed in front of the TV.

Standing up straight, he nodded and set his shotgun in front of the door. "Okay. I see… I'm gonna go get cleaned up, then."

"I'm hungry." Adam announced as he clicked off the TV and gave up any pretense of not listening.

"Starve, you tattle-tale." Liz swatted him as Dean disappeared into the bathroom.

"I'll bet Dean is hungry, too."

"Probably." Liz sighed and shifted John from one shoulder to the other. "This little guy is good until he sees Daddy eating."

"Well, glad to see he hasn't totally changed." Cassie grabbed her purse. "I assume the coast is clear for me to go back to my room?"

"I would think so."

"I still have people to interview and somehow keep this… supernatural aspect out of the papers." She turned at the door. "Is it ever over? I mean, will you ever live a normal life? Dean told me it all started with something that killed his mom…"

"We killed it last week… We were on our way to visit my parents and Adam's grandparents when I had a vision of something killing in Michigan. The afternoon after Dean took care of that, I had a vision of something killing here in Anguilla." Liz explained. "It could be over, if we wanted it to be… but so long as I'm getting visions of innocent people dying… we can't ignore it. Too many innocent people have lost their lives fighting it for us to ignore the innocent lives who don't know how."

"Visions… how's that working out for you?"

"Once she stops tripping over stuff, she's cool." Adam popped up between them. "Can I pick dinner? Dean always orders pizza, I'm sick of pizza."

"How can you guys eat again?" Liz groaned. "You ate the diner out of waffles, you ate hamburgers bigger than your head for lunch and you did have dinner. Sandwiches and chips."

"Come on, Mom… he's a growing boy." Cassie ruffled his hair.

"She's not my mom. She's my stepmom." Adam rushed to fix his hair.

"How does that work exactly?"

"Biomom died. Biodad gave me up for adoption. Adopted parents died too. Then I found out Biodad was dead too. Biodad's wife." He pointed to Liz. "Stepmom… and husband number two." He pointed to Dean when he emerged from the shower. Then he pointed to himself. "Well-adjusted and supercool kid."

"Sometimes… you just want a roll of duct tape." Liz kissed his head. "And maybe a time machine to keep him this age. I shudder to think what kind of monster Dean will turn him into once he hits those teen years."

"What did I do?" Dean tossed his towel aside to join the party at the door. "I thought we were…" Dean looked down at the kid, wearing a too-big Zeppelin shirt and too much gel in his hair. "Yeah, well, I gotta train him well."

One week later…  
(July 18, 2011)

Liz sat awkwardly in the Evans kitchen while Diane pulled a batch of cookies out of the oven. Philip, Dean and Adam were outside looking at the Impala's exterior. Dean had been warned about showing the inside of the trunk.

"How did Adam get along up there?"

"Okay." Liz turned from the window to face her late husband's mother. "He's got a few friends already. He likes the school. He adores Bobby, that's Dean's boss at the garage… and I think he's got a crush on Dean."

"I can see that." Diane had a laugh. "Adam looks so much like Max at that age… Does he ask about him?"

"Yeah. He asks about both of them… Let me tell you… it's teaching me to be a better person by not focusing on her lesser traits."

"I'm sure you do the same for Max."

"Oh no. I tell him everything I can about Max. Good and bad. He needs to know that Max was a person and that it's okay to make mistakes… that wasn't one of Max's best traits." She took a breath. "It also helps that Dean will talk about Max, too."

"I didn't realize that they were such good friends."

"Me either… I guess they really respected one another… and it's probably some guy thing that I'll never understand."

"Well, Adam is definitely smitten with your family." Diane joined Liz to gaze out the window. "I don't know how he'll take moving here."

Liz didn't say a word. That had been the original plan from day one. As soon as the demon was dead, they were going to give Adam to the Evans. Adam staying with them was temporary. He was always, always going to be with his family in the end. Liz was saved by the baby monitor. Snatching it up, she went to retrieve John from his nap in the guest room. She returned with her hungry fella for Diane to pinch and squeeze.

"He is so beautiful." Diane cooed.

"And he eats like a lumberjack."

"Surely not. He looks small."

"He's growing so fast. He's eating up now, though."

"Was he overly small?"

"No, but he was skin and bones. I was so afraid he'd get sick because he was skinny and winter is so cold sometimes."

"Well, he's perfectly healthy now."

"Yes. Inherited his daddy's appetite."

"How are the two of you doing with all the changes this year?"

"It's brought us together, I think. Nothing like responsibility to make you grow up a little."

"Yes, it will do that."

Dean marched in with Adam hanging from his biceps. "Grandma Evans, we're hungry."

"I'm warning you." Liz cleared her throat. "Once you commit to feeding these two, you may never stop."

"He's a growing boy." Dean defended Adam.

"Then what's your excuse?"

Adam jumped down and held a hand out to each Winchester. "Children, please. Let the woman cook."

"We need to put a muzzle on him." Dean feinted toward the boy, who jumped but covered by hopping onto a stool at the island.

"Well, I ordered in." Diane winked at her grandson. "Have a cookie to tide you over."

--

Adam was near to tears when Dean and Liz rose to leave. He was supposed to stay the night with his grandparents. Dean and Liz were down the road at the Crashdown with her parents. He stood and started to speak but he couldn't get the words out and the adults didn't leave any breaks where he could get in a word. He whimpered softly and hoped no one heard him but he saw Dean's attention leave the conversation.

Dean saw Adam's face, then cleared his throat. "I think Adam needs to show me his room first."

"Um… okay." Liz sat back down and made small talk while they disappeared.

--

Liz peered into the backseat to look at the baby, snoozing, then to Dean. "So what was all that about? I didn't hear Adam ask you to see his room."

"He was freaking out… so we did some salt and holy water sigils. He'll be good till morning." Dean shrugged her off and concentrated on steering the Impala back to the restaurant. Then he felt her eyes burning a hole through his skull. "What?"

"He doesn't really know them."

"It's not like he knows us that well."

"He knows us better."

"He'll be fine."

"They want to keep him indefinitely."

"Wasn't that the plan?" Dean looked her in the eyes as he pulled into a spot in front of the Crashdown.

"Yeah, it was." She lowered her voice and took a breath.

"Wants and wishes don't always happen Liz. It's one night."

"I know."

The next morning…  
(July 19, 2011)

Liz woke to Dean's voice rumbling in his chest beneath her ear. "No, no. It's okay. It's okay… I hear you… Adam, calm down for me… listen… I've been through here before. There are no monsters in Roswell. I promise you that." He cleared his throat. "Do you still have the holy water I gave you?" There was a long pause. "So, you redrew the sigils, that's good… and checked the salt lines… okay… Buddy, you're set. Nothing is getting in that room. Try to get some sleep while you can, little man… I know… We won't… yeah, we'll stop by today…"

Dean closed his phone and waited for Liz to jump on the chance to go pick Adam up. She didn't. She just lay there and didn't say a word. He knew she wasn't asleep because her breathing never evened out. He cleared his throat but waited for her to speak, which she did after ten agonizing minutes. "Was that Adam?"

"You know it was."

"Is he okay?"

"Just a monster in the closet… but not a real one."

"Okay."

--

Liz watched her mom fawn over the boys. Adam, in true nature, ate it all up. The two of them and Diane had a good time watching Adam's antics as he played up the center of attention bit while the men manned the grill with beer in hand.

"Isabel told me that he was a little ham but he was so quiet last night after the kids left." Diane leaned over to tell Nancy.

"Really?"

"He seemed almost shy. This Adam right here is the little boy that I wish Max had been able to be with us. The one we got last night… just like Max when we first got him. He was distant and quiet and I think he was crying last night."

"Oh no." Nancy gasped.

"So then Yvette asked me if I could do a handstand but I can't… so I fell down." Adam finished explaining to Liz.

"Do you want to learn?" Liz asked, trying to listen to her mother and Diane whisper while still paying attention to Adam's story.

"Yeah, when we go home I've got to win a bet. Think Dean can teach me?"

"If you ask him, sure." Liz nodded and turned her head to check on the baby. Her eyes a little wet at hearing him call South Dakota home.

"Liz, honey, Isabel said she'd be here in a few days." Diane interrupted.

"Aunt Izzy?" Adam gave them a lopsided smile.

"You miss her?" Liz brushed his hair out of his face, blinking rapidly to dry her own eyes.

"Yeah. She's bossy but she's nice."

"Sounds like my daughter." Diane sighed and shook her head. "Why don't you go get those men to play catch with you?"

"Awesome, where's the ball?" Adam leapt up and hit the ground running to tug on Dean's arm.

"So, he's been getting on well with you two?" Diane began.

"Uh-huh." Liz narrowed her eyes a bit, they had gone over all this the afternoon before.

"How is he with the baby?" Nancy cut in.

"Really good, actually." Liz smiled to herself. "I walked into the kitchen a few months ago and Adam was changing John's diaper but he assured me because it was only wet and if it had been muddy that it was my job."

"He knew how to change a diaper?" Diane smiled broadly.

"Dean taught him. Apparently, while I'm in the shower in the mornings, the guys learn all sorts of things without me."

"Liz… have… have you and Dean thought about maybe adopting Adam?" Diane led slowly. "He obviously adores the two of you and he's getting along so well…"

"We… hadn't discussed it, actually." Liz dropped her eyes to her hands. "I kind of promised Isabel that we'd follow her plan and… we have so far. We got rid of the immediate threats…" She took a breath. "I can't… really imagine living in the bar without him, though. He's… made himself a little niche…"

"It's just a suggestion." Diane placed her hand on Liz's.

"It's not that I don't want him. I adore him… but really… all Max ever wanted for him was a normal life." Liz let her eyes meet both of theirs. "It's not a question of wanting him or loving him to pieces… I want to do right by him. He's been through so much already."

"Maybe the three of you should sit down and discuss it." Nancy prompted.

"You're right. We should."

TBC


	70. Epilogue

Epilogue – Five years later…  
(October 30, 2016)

"My Family by Adam Douglas. Five years ago, my parents died in a train wreck. That's when I found out that they weren't my real parents. My real mom died when I was nine months old and she didn't have any family to speak of. My real dad was 18 years old and didn't know how to give me the things I needed so he gave me up. When the social worker called me into the room, I was nine years old. She told me that she found my family but that my real dad had died. He was only 25 when he died but he had a sister with a rich husband who lived just one state over. They were coming to take me home. My aunt is a tall woman with blonde hair and a lot of love. I have two cousins through her. She told me how much I looked like my dad and that she loved me but she wasn't the one who would take care of me. That's when I met my real dad's wife; his widow who had gotten remarried and had a kid. I didn't want to like them at first. I stayed with them for three months before they took me to meet my grandparents. They were supposed to leave me with my real dad's parents but after a couple of weeks, they changed their mind. I still live with my real dad's widow and her husband but three years ago I started calling them Mom and Dad. Now I have a brother and a sister who aren't so bad now that they can talk. I still have an aunt and uncle through my real dad but also an uncle on my new dad's side. He's getting married next month. I have two cousins that I talk to on the phone. My real dad's parents send me presents when they feel like it, which is once a month. My new mom's parents send me presents when I make honor roll and at holidays. It's a little weird to be the only one in the family that's not blood related but my real dad was adopted and so was his sister. Maybe it's not as weird as I thought. Maybe my family tree isn't very neat and tidy but it's mine and that makes it all the more special. There's a lot of sad business when I talk about my family but every family has their share of ups and downs. By my count, I'm due for some major ups in the future. It's been pretty sweet so far when it hasn't been down. My Uncle Bobby, who isn't really an uncle so much as a family friend, always says that you have to take your family where you can get it because people die or move away. 'Family isn't what you're born with, it's what you make out of the people you would trust with your life. Keep those close to your heart.'"

"Five hundred words… including the title but I'll give it to you." The teacher put down the bean counter.

"Awesome." Adam nodded and took his seat again.

"Dude, you suck!"

"Lame!"

"Lifetime Movie Award!"

"Silence from the Peanut Gallery!" The teacher rose from his seat in the middle of the room. "Honesty got the young man through his paper. He wrote about something he knew, something that was obviously important to him. You all could learn something from him." Standing in front of his classroom full of monkeys, he sighed. "The exercise is not to write great literature. It is to identify yourself in 500 words, whichever those 500 words might be."

The bell rang and all the kids ran out the door before the teacher could get another word out. Adam took his time packing his things to go home. He looked up when the teacher stood in front of his desk. "Yeah?"

"How true is your essay?"

"100 per cent." Adam picked up his bag to leave.

"This is some heavy stuff and you seem to be dealing okay but if you ever think you might want to talk to someone, I can make a recommendation to the counselor."

"Nah… lots of family friends to talk to. I gotta jet. My turn to feed the kids tonight."

Adam managed to get out of the school without anyone holding him up very long. Yvette waved at him, shyly, from her crowd of friends. He had never quite figured out why they had stopped hanging out after school but at least she didn't hate him all of a sudden. He made quick work of the mile and a half from the school to the bar. He slipped in and grabbed Macky before she could run away. "Where's Mom?"

"Johnny!" She squealed when he began to tickle her.

"She ran out to pick him up from school." Bobby cleared his throat from where he was reading the newspaper. "Macky was keeping me company."

"Hey Uncle Bobby." Adam planted himself on the other side of the table with Macky in his lap. "How's Max doing?"

"Better but he's still tossing up his dinner. Vet thinks it's just a virus but if he don't start keeping something down, it's over." Bobby folded his hands over his paper. He almost preferred having demons kill his dogs than for them to die of illness. "Maybe you can go sit with him later."

"Yeah, you know I will." Adam nodded then lifted Macky onto his shoulders. "Staying for dinner? I'm cooking."

"Boy, I'd rather eat glass."

Adam swung Macky around through the air until he could set her on the island in the kitchen. Apparently, it had been a slow day because nothing had been turned on at all. He listened to her chatter as he dug the mac and cheese box out of a cabinet then set to finding something in the refrigerator that wouldn't get him fired as the Friday night cook. Liz came in the back door with Johnny in tow. "Good, you're home."

"Came straight home as instructed…" He briefly showed her the reheat roast and the vegetables on the counter behind him. She nodded and scooped Macky off the table to press kisses all over her face. "Hey… um… can I ask you something?"

"I don't know when Dean's coming home." Liz shook her head at him.

"I know that he had to go… the FBI…" Adam sighed cause he really wanted to talk to Dean about it but no one knew when it would be safe for him to come home. "It's a girl… thing."

"Okay…" Liz set Macky down and patted John's head. "Kids, go play with Uncle Bobby." She sat down and waited for Adam to keep talking as he focused very intently on getting dinner into the oven and pots of water boiling. "Adam…"

"I don't want to talk to my mom about this stuff." Adam prefaced with a gesture that she was not to get offended. "Yvette stopped hanging out around here and she didn't tell me why. I see her at school but we don't talk anymore. The most I can figure is that it's a girl thing. I just thought we were better friends than that."

"I see." Liz tried to hide her smile as she leaned on the table top. "She not mad at you, is she?"

"Well, no… She waves and stuff but…"

"Maybe… and this is just a maybe… I'm not going to pretend that I remember high school or anything." She flashed him the briefest of smiles. "Maybe the reason she stopped hanging out around here is not because she doesn't like you."

"But if she still likes me then why…" He turned to see her raised eyebrows. "Oh."

"Yeah. 'Oh.' So maybe you stop focusing on the fact that she's not playing ball with you and maybe try asking her to do something else."

"Like what? I'm a year away from driving her to a movie."

"So you DO like her!" Liz exclaimed and made him blush.

"I never said that I didn't." Adam tried to dig his way out of his hole. "I just… She's pretty. Okay? I said it. I think she's pretty and if that's what she wants then maybe but…"

"Adam…" Liz reached over and gripped his hand. "Don't ask her out because you think it's what she wants. Ask her out because you really want to. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Just… invite her over. Rent some movies or invite her to dinner." She patted his hands. "But under no circumstances are you to be unsupervised."

He scoffed but nodded. When she stood up, he rolled his eyes. "I know, watch the kids and let you know what time dinner is ready."

"You're such a good boy." She reached over to pinch his cheek.

--

It was slow. Dreadfully slow because tomorrow was Halloween and everyone was hunting up costumes and driving out to Baxter or Rutherford for parties. Hunters were taking it easy. It was perfect for catching up on ledgers or doing inventory but it also meant putting a delay on new orders to make sure current inventory was going to get used. Sighing, Liz leaned on the bar to glance over her ledger. She didn't bother to look up when the door opened. Not even when the shadow fell over her. "Can I get a beer and some pussy?"

Liz had her hand on her gun before she looked up to find the green eyes of her husband. "Don't do that, I was so ready to put a bullet in your forehead." She shook her head at him even as she was draping herself across the bar to grip his face between her hands. "I'm so glad you're home."

"Yeah, me too." Dean breathed out against her lips. He hauled her over the top of the bar and just held her close. The last seven months had been hard. Little to no contact, constantly on the move, killing demons with his brother by his side. Just like old times except that now Dean had something to look forward to when he needed a break.

"You really shouldn't use come-ons like that." She chided him softly. "You're the father of a beautiful little girl and just think if some honorable man or hunter or fireman came into this bar and greeted her that way."

"Won't ever happen. Not to my daughter." Dean shook his head but didn't let her go. "Where are the little heathens?"

"In the kitchen."

"Leave 'em there… just for a little bit." He managed to have five more minutes to reacquaint himself with his wife before the inevitable happened.

"Daddy home!" Macky came barreling out of the kitchen and jumped up, having every faith in the world that her daddy would catch her.

Dean caught her and tossed her up, catching her again easily before squeezing her against his chest and pressing a noisy kiss to her face. His own eyes stared back at him from her mother's face, though it seemed like she'd gotten a light dusting of freckles across her nose over the summer. "How's my girl?"

"I mish you." She threw her arms around his neck and squeezed.

Dean shut his eyes and held on to her. The last time he'd seen her was the week after her third birthday. "Daddy missed you, too."

She sat up in his arms and threw her little hands out wide. "I big now."

"Yeah, you are, Mary Mack. Stop growing. What's Mommy feeding you?"

"Veggiebles." Macky smacked her lips.

"Daddy!" Johnny ran through the bar and launched himself at his father's knees.

"There's my boy." Dean reached down to haul him up onto his hip so he could hug that one as well. "You're definitely bigger."

John posed with one arm so his dad could see the muscles he'd built over the summer. "I can beat up Adam."

"Speak of the devil, where is he?" Dean frowned at Liz.

"Fixing dinner." Liz lowered her voice. "He's having girl problems."

"Right… it's that time." Dean nodded and tried to walk all four of them into the kitchen. Then he caught site of the oldest of his little brood. "Look how pretty that is. Do you have an apron to go with those smells?"

"That's sexist, Dean Winchester." Liz pinched his chest before moving away to help Adam finish up dinner.

"Hey." Adam barely looked up from the table.

"What? No love?" Dean faked a broken heart as he deposited each of his other children into their respective seats at the table. He took his seat and looked to the younger two. "Is my timing impeccable or what? Home in time for kisses and dinner."

"Where'd you drop Sam?" Liz turned suddenly.

"Where do you think I dropped him? I made a special trip, out of my way to drop him first so that I could come home and stay home with my loving family."

"Stop being facetious." Liz shook her head at him.

"What's fash-see-shus?" Johnny asked from where he sat swinging his feet.

"It means that Daddy's making fun."

"Daddy is having fun. I'm not being mean. I'm teasing." Dean tried to clarify but it was clear that his five year old was not all that interested. "Anyway. Uncle Sam said he'd drive down on Sunday. He has presents for you guys."

"Did you bring us presents?" Johnny climbed up on his knees to lean on the table.

Dean's eyes went wide for a second. "Presents? Who needs presents when Daddy brings home stories?"

"Where'd you go?"

"Let's save the scarier stories for when he's older, huh?" Liz cut in.

"Okay, let me tell you about the time that my dad went hunting a chupacabra…"

--

Dean leaned in the doorway with his beer. Adam had been quiet all night. "Hey man."

"Hey." Adam didn't even look up from his book.

Dean walked in, shut the door behind him and took a seat on the end of the bed. He took a swig out of his bottle then held it out to Adam. Just as Dean was going to retract his offering, Adam put his book down and took the bottle. He smelled it a bit before he took a swig. Dutifully, he handed it back as he fought the taste to get it down his throat. "You ready to talk to me, now?"

"I'm being a dick. I know." Adam admitted. He shook his head. "It's just… I needed to talk to you and you didn't answer your phone and I talked to Liz and that's when you came home. I know it's not your fault but…"

"Yeah, I know. Being a teenager sucks."

"I bet you kissed a girl before you were 15."

"You'd be right."

"I'll bet you'd already lost your virginity, too."

"Nah." Dean shook his head. "That came when I was almost 17 but you know… you're not me. I was always in trouble, I was already killing evil things… I got in everything that I could while I could in case I died."

"That's kind of depressing."

"Yeah, it was."

"My adopted dad always said that he wished he had been a better man but I don't know what he meant by that…" Adam shrugged. "I was 9, it's not like I was ready for the birds and the bees."

"Liz told me that she was Max's first kiss. He was already 16. You were the product of his first time… so… I guess he was 17?"

"I'm not asking Liz that."

"I don't blame you." Dean pulled on his beer and offered another sip but it was refused. "Listen, either it happens or it doesn't. So, who's the girl that's got you all twisted up?"

"Yvette… like always." Adam scoffed and leaned back against the wall. "It's stupid. We were best friends until I hit high school and all of a sudden we can't have a conversation. Then it's… We're in the same school again and… she's not mad at me but she's not talking to me and… Mom says she likes me but if she does, why doesn't she talk to me?"

"Dude… I don't understand Mom and I'm married to her. If I had to relive high school… any of them…" Dean made a face at the sheer number of high schools that he had attended. "I would rather swallow a flaming pile of dog shit."

"That bad?"

"Yeah. Always being the new kid. Sometimes getting in with the girls, sometimes not. Sometimes walking into a lover's spat without knowing it. Be glad you already know her."

"Mom said I should ask her out."

"Do you want to?"

"Well, yeah. I mean… she's pretty… and she's nice." Adam frowned. "And I saw her talking to Austin and I wanted to punch his lights out."

"Did you?"

"No."

"Okay. So, ask her out already."

"And do what? It's not like I can drive…" He caught the look on Dean's face. "Legally, anyway."

"Dude, there are all sorts of things that you can do with a girl that do not involve a car. Trust me." Dean got up and finished off his bottle. "So, ask her out, date her… whatever. If you do think you're going all the way, use a condom. I'm still far too young to be a granddad… and also… the age of consent is 16… so uh… don't get caught until after both of you are 16."

"Such a great speech, there, Dad."

"Hey, at least you got one. My dad handed me a Playboy and told me not to go blind." Dean reached for the door. "I did get chased with a shotgun more than once… so be ware."

"Hey Dean…" Adam stopped him from leaving. "Thanks."

"My phone got demolished by a werewolf in Pensacola or else I would have picked up. Sorry." Dean suddenly frowned as he backed out of the room. "What are you even doing home on a Friday night?"

"Oh… right… I'm supposed to tell you." Adam rose from his bed and held out his arms. "I got into a fight with Austin the first week of school during football tryouts… I'm banned from the games this season."

"Did you kick his ass?"

"Yeah."

"What'd he do?"

"Said something about someone that he shouldn't have."

"Who?" Dean narrowed his eyes.

"Mom."

"And what did this Austin have to say about Mom?"

"It's not so much what he said about her as much as what he implied about her by saying that the bar used to be a brothel back a long time ago and that history repeats itself… so, I decked him."

"Good. As far as I'm concerned, you did nothing wrong and you didn't kill the twerp so hopefully it's a lesson learned." Dean caught Liz's eye down the hallway. "What?"

"Nothing." She shook her head and disappeared down the stairs to go back to the bar.

Dean rolled his eyes and made his next stop. The little ones were playing a game with some kind of cartoon character on their cards. Johnny was trying to teach Macky how to play but she just wanted to giggle at the funny faces on the cards. Dean sucked it up and hunkered down on the floor to mess up their game some more.

--

Liz slid into bed and framed herself around Dean. He ran his fingers down her back for the longest moment. "So, what did I do wrong?"

"Dean… he shouldn't be encouraged to fight."

"He knows what he did was wrong but he had a noble reason for doing it."

"I know he did but you shouldn't advocate his wrongdoings."

"Okay."

"I missed you."

"God, I missed you." Dean rolled into her and found her mouth in the darkness.

"Dean, hurry, they'll start asking for water and stories again any moment now." Liz begged as she tore at his shorts.

The next morning…  
(Halloween, 2016)

Liz woke with a knee in her back and an elbow in her stomach. The sun wasn't up yet but she could not bear that position for a second longer. Dean had the same weary expression on his face. He raised an eyebrow at her. "It's a good thing we got our time in last night. Macky racked me in her sleep. I'm still seeing stars."

"Oh Dean." She reached over and slid a hand behind his neck.

An amused snort from the doorway made them look up. Adam. "I'm going over to Bobby's to help him with Max… have fun, lovebirds."

"He's too chipper for this early in the morning." Dean groaned.

"Pete volunteered to work Saturdays for Bobby… sometimes Yvette tags along."

"Ah, mystery solved." He turned his thoughts around. "He's a pretty sweet kid. It's not that he doesn't get into trouble but… despite everything… he's an optimist but in a realistic sort of way."

"Yeah… no clue who he got that from."

"Come on. Let's get these brats awake and tired out by sundown."

--

Liz wrapped up a picnic lunch when Adam didn't return to the bar for his noon meal. She dropped lunch off in Bobby's kitchen, then went in search of the men. She found them in the back of the garage's property. Both men were on their knees, peering under an old car. When Liz got closer, she could see the tears in their eyes. Bobby blinked rapidly but didn't take his eyes off the shadowed area under the car. Adam had no such restraint. "He won't come out." His chin quivered when he looked up at her. "I've tried everything. He's really sick. If he doesn't keep anything down, he'll die." He shook his head when she started to speak. "When I try to climb in to get him out, he snaps at me."

Liz took his outstretched arm in her hands and saw the red bite marks that didn't quite break the skin. "Oh, Adam…"

"No, don't say it…" He shook his head at her and tried to climb under the car once more. Max bared his teeth but didn't rise. The growl was weak but his head whipped around to bite at Adam's ankle. He missed but he kept his teeth unsheathed.

Bobby watched the boy maneuver the tight space to lie alongside the sick dog. Eventually, Max calmed and let Adam stroke his neck and ears. "Boy, be careful."

"He shouldn't die alone." Adam ducked his head into Max's neck. "He's been a good dog."

"The vet thinks that whatever damage he had when we first got him… might have been enough to disrupt whatever immunity he had." Bobby whispered to Liz. "I shoulda took him in when I got him but… I done this with all my dogs. He was doing good."

"It's not your fault, Bobby." Liz reassured him. "Dogs die. They get abused. They get better and sometimes they get sick."

"And I know it but that one never lost a pet before." He pointed under the car where Adam was willing life to stay inside the pile of fur and bones in his arms.

The next afternoon  
(November 1, 2016)

Sam found himself presiding over a dog funeral. Adam had insisted. Liz had her hands full with her babies asking 'how come?' and 'why?' Dean stroked Macky's back as they began filling in the grave. Sam looked to his brother. "So much for a cheerful reunion."

"It is what it is." Dean shrugged.

"Hey…" Yvette joined the group. "I found his ball." She held out the ratty thing for Adam to take. He took it from her and held it a moment before he tossed it into the hole near Max's head. Then he focused singularly on filling the grave.

Bobby shook his head and put on his hat. "I'm not getting anymore dogs." He turned and ambled his way back to the garage.

"He'll have a new dog by next month."

"I don't know, Dean…" Sam shook his head and grabbed the shovel to help. "It took him a long time after Rumsfeld died to get a new dog. Maybe he's finally had it."

"There are few constants in this life, Sam. Bobby saving dogs is one of those few."

"Maybe this time, we get him a puppy. A nice healthy puppy with all its shots and tags." Adam scooped handful after handful of dirt into the hole, sniffing and wiping at his face. He had dirt everywhere.

Dean and Liz exchanged a look. Macky started squirming to get down. "I wan help."

"No." Dean shook his head and readjusted his grasp on her.

"I wan help."

"No, you're not—" Dean blinked when her little hand slapped his cheek hard.

"Mary Mackenzie Winchester." Liz gasped. "You don't hit Daddy."

"You know what? It's nap time." Dean told the little girl who had started to cry the instant her mother had blurted out all three of her names.

"I sorry. I sorry." Macky wailed as she was hauled back into the bar to go to her room for naptime. "No nap. I sorry."

--

Liz felt weird. She had buried a dog named after her late first husband. Adam had been spiteful when he named the dog but seemed to be truly mourning the old mutt. He and Yvette were sharing a plate of chili fries in the front booth where she could see them from her perch behind the bar. Dean stole a beer from the cooler and sat next to her. "Mary Mack is asleep."

"Liar."

"What? She is."

"You only call her Mary Mack when she's got you wrapped around her little finger." She stole his beer to take a long pull.

"Okay, so maybe she settled for a time out." He took his beer back. "So, when did he suddenly realize there was a girl in that little thing over there?"

"He's been huffing and sighing for a while… I think it started when school started. She had stopped hanging around when he was a freshman, remember? Now she's a freshman and he's a sophomore and other sophomores have been checking her out." She stared at him for a long moment. "I wonder who you were in high school. I try to picture it and all I get is you with no facial hair to speak of, a beer in hand and a leather jacket."

"Pretty dead on, actually." He winced and rubbed at his stubble. "And if she was a waitress, I was trying to get into her pants."

"So, this thing for waitresses was not new?"

"Nah, one of my older favorites… eventually I broadened my horizons."

They sat in silence, leaning against one another, passing a beer or four back and forth. Sam and Serena entertained Johnny with lots of toys they bought to spoil him with. A bag behind them was reserved for Macky when she woke up. Dean only managed to nudge Liz just in time to see Adam go in for the life changing moment of trying to kiss his best friend. Liz and Dean nearly fell off the stool when Adam realized they were watching and sent them a nasty look. Quickly, they pretended to examine the shelf for anything that wouldn't get them in trouble for watching the first.

Liz stole his beer one more time to kill the bottle. He just stared at her for the longest time. "I love you… you know that right?"

"Yeah." She nodded and let him lick the bitter taste of beer off her lips. She melted into him, tossing the empty into its bucket without a thought to aim. It landed with a clatter but her ears had long accustomed to that sound. They only stopped to breathe when someone beat a rhythm out on the bar top.

"Barkeep! Stop grossing out the kids and get me a beer." Kyle's voice cut through the silence.

Liz groaned and tilted her head back to look at him, letting Dean bury his face in her neck. "I thought Betty Lou cut you off."

"This beer gut will not maintain itself. Anyway… she's shopping with her mom in Rutherford." Kyle shrugged and then shuddered. "Basinets and frilly baby… things."

"Kisses can wait." Liz kissed the top of Dean's head before moving away to retrieve Kyle's beer.

"Fill me in. What'd I miss? Obviously the return of the man of the house." Kyle smiled at Dean's extended middle finger. "Come on. I need to get in as much testosterone as I can before the baby arrives."

"Johnny discovered the inside of his pants are different from the inside of a girl's pants." Dean moved around to sit next to Kyle. "It's going to be an adventure."

"What? Planning on staying still for a while?"

"FBI's chasing their tails, Liz hasn't had a vision in months. Sammy's getting married next month." Dean fiddled with the label on the fresh beer Liz handed him. "I guess I could stay put and enjoy my wife."

"You mean life?"

"That, too." Dean winked at his wife, who shook her finger at him before moving on to bus some tables and not so subtly eavesdrop on the teens in the front booth. Dean took a long pull on his beer and relaxed for the first time in his life before the kids started asking for money and toys and stories and all the other normal things that he'd missed since he was four. His running days were over. Let the FBI try to get him now. They'd have to take him kicking and screaming, with both barrels of alien-juiced-consecrated iron blazing.

The End.


End file.
